Background: Decision-making is an essential skill for surgeons, but systematic objective feedback is lacking. Cognitive feedback provides information about how risk factors relate to outcomes, and how individual surgeons mentally synthesize these relationships.
Methods: Pre-feedback, we assessed accuracy and reliability of 105 trainee surgeons'/medical students' estimates of operative mortality for major surgery for 28 patient vignettes with varying risk factors, using a published risk model as a gold standard. Post-feedback, participants were retested on a second case set.
Results: Post-feedback, both groups' estimates became more reliable. Pre-feedback, medical students were less accurate than trainee surgeons; post-feedback, their accuracy improved to match that of trainee surgeons, who did not improve further.
Conclusions: Cognitive feedback improved risk estimate reliability in both groups and accuracy in the medical students group. Lack of improvement in the surgical group implies a ceiling effect. These findings have implications for training and assessment of surgical decision-making.