Grant: Project Grant - Priority Announcement: Patient-Oriented Research

Making decisions for surgery is difficult for children and their parents, and each family is unique in how they approach this decision and what information they need for it. Unfortunately, surgeons counsel regarding surgery using scientific data from their, rather than patients', perspective. Moreover, patient and family priorities essential to making personalized decisions for surgery are often ignored by the surgeons, and rarely expressly asked. We plan to turn the tables on this process by placing the patient and the family in the center of the surgical decision-making process. We will use scientific approaches from psychology and medical ethics to identify patient and family priorities and values regarding their information needs in the surgical decision-making process. The resulting personalized communication tool will empower patients to help make ultimately satisfactory surgical decisions. For our study, parents of children consulting a surgeon for groin or tonsils problems and their parents will be asked to participate in a focus group discussion and complete a survey. This will allow us to identify the information needs, preferences and priorities that patients have when facing surgery and determine how patients and their families rate outcomes after surgery. We will then use the results to create a personalized interactive risk communication tool for surgeons to use with their patients, which we will test in a clinic setting. The study will identify the real communication and decision-making needs of families facing pediatric surgery. The proposed tool is expected to change the way surgeons discuss treatment with their patients, improve patient-related experience and satisfaction with the surgical process, and potentially reduce the number of unnecessary surgeries.