Table 2.

Representative Quotations on the Actual and Desired Role of the Hand Surgeon when Choosing a Treatment Option

Actual Role	Desired Role	Patient (Most Recent Treatment)
“You know, it is my nature to research things, but I didn’t have the opportunity. I mean, I was there in the moment, and I was asked just to make a decision there. Relative to, I think there were three or four kinds of surgeries, or ways they could repair?”	That’s part of the struggle for me. It’s kind of like… you’re the medical professionals. Here I am, a sixty-some year-old woman, you know. [The surgeon] had better able to choose or decide which is the best [treatment] for me.”	65-y.o. female (VLPS)
“I didn’t have an input into [choosing a treatment] at all. The orthopedic resident did. She had a supervising doctor, […] but he left it in her hands because she does tons of orthopedics, and I don’t know if it maybe was just crystal clear to them that they should at least give it their best shot to do a closed reduction.”	“It was a touchy, not a touchy conversation, but a careful conversation. I didn’t want to say to the doctor, ‘I know better than you’ because I clearly don’t but I also didn’t want to say, ‘Don’t write me off as a 70+ year old woman who doesn’t need to do anything anymore. I feel like I’ve got a lot to do’.”	71-y.o. female (Casting)
“The doctor said it was perfectly set, but he didn’t think it would need surgery.”	“I guess I was a little disappointed. I thought surgery fixes everything and if there really is a little floating piece then what does that even mean? Is that problematic later? I just wanted it all to be taken care of right then and not have to have problems later.”	74-y.o. female (Casting)

VLPS, volar locking plating system; y.o., year old