Annals of surgery
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To examine how surgeons use the "fix-it" model to communicate with patients before high-risk operations. ⋯ Although the use of "fix-it" is familiar for explaining medical information to patients, surgeons recognize that the model can be problematic for determining the value of an operation. Whether patients can transition between understanding how their disease is fixed with surgery to a subsequent deliberation about whether they should have surgery is unclear and may have broader implications for surgical decision making.