Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons guidelines development: patient engagement update to standard operating procedure.

Introduction: The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Guidelines Committee develops evidence-based surgical guidelines. Involvement of patient partners is important to ensure patient concerns and values are adequately addressed and incorporated. This standard operating procedure (SOP) for the process of patient partner involvement within the guidelines is described here.

Methods: This document outlines the SAGES Patient Partners SOP to involve patient partners in a consistent and reproducible manner.

Results: SAGES has now developed a SOP to include patient partners so that patient views are represented in current guidelines.

Conclusion: Guidelines must be patient centric and in order to do so must include patient partners. The SAGES Guidelines Patient Engagement Update to Standard operating Procedure aims to provide an outline for systematically doing so.