Understanding what influences orthopedic surgical decision making: a mixed methods systematic review

Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT) are the best way to find out if something works. Patients are allocated to at least two groups at random. Group 1: Receive a new treatment Group 2: Receive a treatment that is routinely used in the NHS or no treatment. RCTs are difficult to do. RCTs which involve surgery are particularly hard because surgeons often have strong preferences for a particular treatment. This can lead surgical RCTs to 'fail'. We would like to apply for funding to the Medical Research Council in Autumn 2022. Our plan is to develop ways to conduct future surgical RCTs to minimise the risk of failure due to surgeon preferences for a certain treatment affecting orthopaedic (bone) surgery RCTs. Before we can do this, we will use internal funding to review previous research to find out how surgeons make decisions. This is important as before we can develop ways to tackle surgeon preferences, we need to understand how they are formed.