Truace
Subscribe

Willingness to undergo autonomous robotic surgery in Jordanian medical students: a national multicenter cross-sectional survey

Surgical robots in clinical use operate under continuous human control, yet research systems now perform surgical tasks on their own. Patient willingness may limit adoption, and to our knowledge no study has measured willingness across defined levels of autonomy while holding performance constant. To estimate the willingness of Jordanian medical students to undergo high-autonomy robotic surgery with immediate surgeon oversight and to quantify how willingness changes as autonomy increases. We conducted a national…

By the Truvace desk2 min read1 sourcePeer-reviewedTRV-2026-1984· cite & verify
Willingness to undergo autonomous robotic surgery in Jordanian medical students: a national multicenter cross-sectional survey
Hospital Universitari Doctor Peset, València 04 by 19Tarrestnom65. CC BY-SA 4.0 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

In brief

A national survey of 574 undergraduate medical students at eight Jordanian schools asked how willing they would be to have their own operation done under five levels of robotic autonomy. Regulatory approval and equal outcomes were held constant. About 39.7% were willing at stage 4, where AI performs the whole operation with a surgeon in the room able to take over.

The results suggest that acceptance of autonomous surgery depends on keeping a surgeon present and able to intervene, so a supervised, stepwise rollout fits these students' stated preferences. The sample is of medical students rather than patients, so how patients themselves would respond is still unknown.

Main points

  1. Willingness was 76.0% for surgeon-controlled robotic surgery and 18.6% when AI operated with no surgeon available.
  2. The largest declines followed AI performing surgical steps (-30.5 percentage points) and loss of immediate surgeon presence (-21.1 points).
  3. Trust in autonomous systems was associated with willingness (adjusted odds ratio per SD 2.75), while surgical career intention was not.
  4. Stage 4 willingness ranged from 34.9% to 41.7% across analyses of university representation and response quality.

The problem

Willingness to undergo autonomous robotic surgery dropped steeply as AI took over surgical steps and surgeon rescue was removed, which may limit adoption of high-autonomy systems.

The rundown

The study was a cross-sectional online survey run between 31 August and 17 September 2026 at eight Jordanian medical schools, using a convenience sample. Students read a standardized vignette and then rated willingness on a five-point scale for each of five arrangements.

The primary endpoint was willingness at stage 4. The gradient across stages was a prespecified secondary analysis, and cumulative link mixed models handled the repeated ratings. The odds of willingness fell by a factor of 0.40 per stage.

Willingness declined in steps rather than smoothly: about 76-78% at stages 1 and 2, 47.2% at stage 3, and 18.6% at stage 5. The decline was steeper among higher-quality respondents.

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewedJournal of Robotic Surgery2026-10-15

The debate