How are good decisions made? How can we optimize our decision-making? Decision-making is a key professional activity that determines surgical outcomes and has a significant effect on a surgeon’s well-being. Yet it remains woefully neglected in surgical training, to the ongoing detriment of patients, professionals and organisations.

‘Surgical Metacognition: Smarter Decision-making for Surgeons’ is a ground-breaking introduction to a new field. The book introduces surgeons to the mental processes that underpin surgical performance, and how we can use this knowledge to improve surgical practice in and outside the operating theatre.

Discover why bad decisions happen to good surgeons and how experts avoid traps to make timely decisions.

The first step, and focus of this book, is to understand ‘metacognition’ (‘thinking about thinking’) in order to improve self-awareness, decision-making and communication. With many realworld surgical examples, the book reviews the thought process of decision-making from recent research. These advances have already transformed other professions – including business management, the military, sport and aviation – and it is time for surgeons to capitalize on this knowledge, to achieve and teach better decision-making and higher levels of expertise.