It’s the surgeon’s standard advice to patients as soon as they awaken from the procedure: start walking. Walk with help. Walk to the chair in your room. Walk as much as you can. But how many steps should patients actually aim for? One patient’s understanding of the instruction can differ from another’s, with a related impact on their recovery.

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are looking to put a finer point on the matter with the help of wearable activity trackers. For a study whose results were published in JAMA Network Open, they outfitted 100 patients with digital step-counters and found that those who took 1,000 steps on day one post-surgery had 63% lower odds of a prolonged length of stay related to their operation.

The lede for my  latest at the AMA. The whole shebang.