SAGES Guidelines Committee Patient Partner Program
Thank you for your interest in joining us at SAGES as a Patient Partner! The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) is a 501c6 non-profit professional organization that was established in 1981. Its members are mostly surgeons and its mission is to innovate, educate and collaborate to improve patient care.
We feel that patients are amongst the best people to push our programs beyond our current thinking by providing valuable insights and new perspectives. Our aim in recruiting patients is to help us enhance our clinical guidelines, augment our advocacy efforts, and join us on our innovation journey.
Further information on the process of how Guidelines are created and how patients/family members can provide their input is below the Patient Partner form. If you are interested, submit the form below to sign up to be put on an e-mail list. Alternatively, we can put you in touch with a member of our Patient Engagement Working Group if you have questions. Being placed on an e-mail list does not commit you to participating and you can be removed at your request at any time. While we do not actively publicize your name or list you on the publication, your identity will not be confidential as the team working on the guidelines will know your name and other information you choose to share with us. Thank you again for your interest!
Sincerely,
SAGES Guidelines Patient Engagement Working Group
Patient Partner form
Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) Guidelines Information for Interested Patients
What is a guideline?
From the SAGES website, “SAGES has been at the forefront of best practices in laparoscopic and endoscopic surgery by researching, developing and disseminating the guidelines and training for standards of practice in surgical procedures. Guidelines are developed under the auspices of the organization and its various committees, and approved by the Board of Governors. Each clinical practice guideline has been systematically researched, reviewed and revised by the Guidelines Committee and also evaluated by an appropriate multidisciplinary team. Guidelines are scheduled for periodic review to allow incorporation of pertinent new developments in medical research knowledge, and practice.”
The process for creating a guideline involves:
- Deciding on “key questions” that a guideline should answer, including what outcomes should be collected to best answer these questions
- Conducting a literature search
- Reviewing abstracts of papers
- Reviewing full texts of papers
- Extracting data and assessing quality
- Compiling and organizing the data
- Re-run the search to find any new articles
- Finalizing the guideline
- Writing a manuscript
- Reviewing by the guideline panel
- Editing
- Vote by committee and board
- Opportunity for SAGES members and general public to review prior to finalization
The three points where patients are especially invaluable during the creation of a guideline are bolded above. Patient involvement helps us to focus on what is important to our patients and answer the appropriate questions.
For more general information on guidelines and to see previously published guidelines, go to the SAGES website: https://www.sages.org/publications/guidelines/
If you would like to sign up to be involved, please submit the Patient Partner form above.