1. Purpose and scope
SurgAtlas is an educational platform for surgical learning and examination preparation. Public SurgAtlas Learn lessons are designed to explain examinable concepts clearly, connect them to relevant clinical reasoning and provide retrieval practice without presenting the material as patient-specific clinical advice.
The editorial standard applies to public lessons, public product explanations and educational material presented as SurgAtlas-authored content.
3. Source hierarchy
- Current UK national guidance is prioritised for time-sensitive clinical recommendations, including NICE and other appropriate national bodies.
- Specialty-society and Royal College guidance is used where it is the relevant professional standard or adds necessary specialty detail.
- Peer-reviewed guidance and high-quality reviews are used when national guidance does not answer the educational question sufficiently.
- Established anatomy, physiology and pathology may be supported by authoritative textbooks and stable reference sources.
- SurgAtlas production teaching material is the starting educational source for public Learn lessons; current management claims are checked against the cited contemporary guidance before publication.
4. Editorial checks before publication
- The lesson must answer the stated educational objective rather than merely target a search phrase.
- High-risk clinical claims, thresholds, drug-related advice and management pathways require a contemporary source appropriate to the claim.
- Terminology, anatomy and classifications are checked for internal consistency across the lesson.
- The public lesson should distinguish established principles from context-dependent or changing recommendations.
- References, publication dates, update dates, author attribution and the educational-use disclaimer must remain visible.
5. Updates and review triggers
Content may be reviewed because a guideline changes, a source is superseded, a correction is reported, a curriculum priority changes or the teaching can be made materially clearer. A substantive clinical update should change the visible update date.
A publication date indicates when the public lesson entered SurgAtlas Learn. It is not a guarantee that every source on the page was published on that date.
6. Commercial and editorial independence
Educational claims should not be changed to make a subscription or feature appear more valuable. Free-versus-Pro descriptions are maintained separately from the medical content and should reflect actual product entitlements.
SurgAtlas does not accept undisclosed sponsored medical recommendations. If commercial relationships or sponsored educational material are introduced in the future, they should be identified clearly and separated from independent editorial content.
7. Use of AI in editorial workflows
AI may assist with drafting, restructuring, consistency checks or retrieval-question formatting, but it is not treated as a medical authority. Source-backed clinical claims remain the responsibility of the human editor and must be checked against the underlying educational source and appropriate contemporary guidance.
AI-generated wording should not create a new guideline claim, dosage, contraindication, threshold or recommendation that is unsupported by the cited source material.