Yeah that was pretty fucked up. Psychopath got caught literally branding a patient’s liver.
Pre-op, surgeons use a skin marker (washes off after a few days) to confirm the correct site, and will sometimes even write “NO” or put an “X” over the same site on the other side. If you go in for surgery on your left leg, then wake up with you left leg still fucked up and a bunch of stitches on your right leg… yeah not a good situation. And it’s happened. There are a TON of redundant checks now to prevent wrong-site surgeries, but people get tunnel visioned and still manage to fuck up every now and then. I was even in a case where we had a close call - cataract surgery. We did all checks, heard and read “left eye” probably 20 times just in the OR. Shit’s all good and we’re ready to start: “Uh… Doc? You just draped the right. This one’s left.”
It was the only left eye that day, all the others were right. So even despite all the checks, our monkey brains still find a way sabotage us.
But that’s also why we do shit as teams, so when one of us fucks up, there are like 4 others there to call us out - hopefully in time to prevent any harm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/13/doctor-branded-liver/
Yeah that was pretty fucked up. Psychopath got caught literally branding a patient’s liver.
Pre-op, surgeons use a skin marker (washes off after a few days) to confirm the correct site, and will sometimes even write “NO” or put an “X” over the same site on the other side. If you go in for surgery on your left leg, then wake up with you left leg still fucked up and a bunch of stitches on your right leg… yeah not a good situation. And it’s happened. There are a TON of redundant checks now to prevent wrong-site surgeries, but people get tunnel visioned and still manage to fuck up every now and then. I was even in a case where we had a close call - cataract surgery. We did all checks, heard and read “left eye” probably 20 times just in the OR. Shit’s all good and we’re ready to start: “Uh… Doc? You just draped the right. This one’s left.”
It was the only left eye that day, all the others were right. So even despite all the checks, our monkey brains still find a way sabotage us.
But that’s also why we do shit as teams, so when one of us fucks up, there are like 4 others there to call us out - hopefully in time to prevent any harm.
Wow crazy, glad you guys caught the error, goodness gracious.
The Checklist Manifesto is about this, right?