Shared Decision-Making in the Context of Uncertain Care Goals and Outcomes: Dissecting a Penetrating Abdominal Trauma Case Complicated by Enterocutaneous Fistulae.

Surgeons care deeply about their patients, their patient's surgical outcomes, and their fund of knowledge as it relates to disease, treatment options, and risk is remarkable. Unfortunately, surgical patients' values, hopes, fears, and unacceptable levels of suffering are rarely elicited and addressed while constructing surgical treatment plans, even when the stakes are high. How can surgeons bring all their experience, education, and expertise to bear in a patient-centered manner amidst uncertainty? Surgeons typically emulate mentors who either employed a solely informative, facilitative, or directive/paternalistic approach to decision-making.