A Clinician's Guide to Conducting Research on Causal Effects

Abstract

Surgeons are uniquely poised to conduct research to improve patient care, yet a gap often exists between the clinician's desire to guide patient care with causal evidence and having adequate training necessary to produce causal evidence. This guide aims to address this gap by providing clinically relevant examples to illustrate necessary assumptions required for clinical research to produce causal estimates.

Keywords: Academic surgery; Causality; Clinical research; Epidemiological research design.