"I've just read in the "Sunday Times," that surgeons are responsible for the majority of medical "accidents" in the UK."
Can't find the article, so I don't know, but I wonder what they mean by "accidents"? I would have thought that errors and misjudgements in the prescribing of medicines would be far greater than surgical "accidents", but still.
Looking back over a long surgical career I can't recall many "accidents" in the sense of major errors, which I have witnessed. Only a couple that have resulted in the death or disability of the patient. I recall quite a few "errors of judgement", some mine and some by other people, which have resulted either in a longer hospital stay or a less favourable outcome, but these hardly qualify as "accidents".
"Mostly, this is due to a lack of communication skills between the team, and has, according to the Royal College of Surgeons, been brought about by the arrogant attitude of some surgeons."
Most "accidents", whether surgical or aviation related are due to lack of communication (look at Comair in Kentucky). Truly arrogant surgeons, just like arrogant pilots, can often be unpleasant and may well be dangerous, but I haven't met very many.
The idea that surgeons are arrogant is an old canard that won't go away and I think it stems from an understandable lack of familiarity with our particular work. The public seem very attached to the stereotype of Sir Lancelot Spratt and TV series after TV series just reinforces this.
The spineless Royal College of Surgeons, now dominated by a claque of non-clinical academics pursuing knighthoods and social workers eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the dubious principles of the New Left, would now say anything, no matter how false and lickspittle, to curry favour with the Bliar government.
Surgery is a most unnatural activity. We're all familiar with the idea of "personal space", in the sense that there is a certain distance that we keep from other people physically. Surgery not only violates personal space (just as nurses and physios do), but actually breaches the skin, our ultimate physical defence, and invades the inside of the body. There's an analogy with penetrative sex, if you like. Anyway, to do this, to actually take a knife and cut into someone, especially at first, requires overcoming deep cultural and "race memory" inhibitions.
To do this regularly, and in oftimes uncertain situations, demands a significant degree of certainty. I would suggest that this certainty is what is often seen as arrogance. As Treves wrote, "He [the surgeon] must have courage, be quick to think and prompt to act, be sure of himself and captain of the venture he commands".
Surgery itself teaches us humility, often quite brutally, and the vicissitudes of chance and nature contrive early to humble most of us of any God-like illusions. Ambroise Paré, the great 16th century French surgeon said, "I dressed him and God healed him".
Aviating is an almost equally unnatural activity and demands an equal, though different, degree of certainty. Once again, this is often seen as arrogance, while in fact it is just the necessary mindset to allow a person to take 500+ people into the stratosphere at just under Mach 1 and be reasonably confident of seeing them safely on the ground at their destination.
I submit that in a world where it is unfashionable for men and women to be strong and steadfast in their purpose and which glorifies the pallid-souled, limp-wristed ditherer that more and more of us who actually know what we are doing will be labelled arrogant.
Last edited by Mac the Knife; 4th September 2006 at 18:45.