Originally published at: Surgeon loses license after fatally removing wrong organ - Boing Boing
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Does the regulatory body / hospital system have some sort of immunity cause only suing the doctor here seems like the tip of the shitberg.
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I know it’s an American way of looking at things, but…ALL THE THINGS should be sued. The hospital that gave him privileges, the medical licensing board, the medical school that he gradated from, etc. The fact that this wasn’t even his first MAJOR screw up makes it all the more horrifying. I am not a doctor in the real world or on TV, but even I’m pretty sure that I could tell the difference between a spleen and a liver. While drunk.
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It is easily one of the most horrific and despicable situations i have ever read about. How did it get this far? What the hell is going on?
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As someone who had their wife murdered by a Dr 22 years ago, thank god that here in the US, human life is priceless, AKA ZERO $$, All you can sue for is lost income. Not much for a 70 yo guy. Don’t worry; the hospital and Doctors are going to be OK. This is why Dr’s experiment on the Elderly. It’s not very risky.
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Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital
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Although, according to Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky, the hospital might have migrated to a different part of the country.
Edited for comprehension
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This sounds like more than simply a criminally-inept doctor at work.
Aviation makes heavy use not just of checklists but of independent verification (if you’ve ever flown, you’ve heard “Cabin crew doors to automatic and cross-check,” which is the signal for cabin crew to verify that their teammates have carried out the operation correctly). Operating theaters also use checklists, and they also do repeat verification (before a knee op, I was asked multiple times to confirm which leg they were supposed to be operating on). Was there really no procedure in place for a knowledgeable staff member to confirm that the surgeon is working on the right organ before he starts cutting?
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I’m a nurse. I’ve been in ORs when organs were (properly) removed. Nothing about this makes any sense. It’s not even a reasonable mistake - even if the person had reversed organs, the blood supply is completely different, the surgery would be totally different, everyone in the OR should have noticed: wrong site, wrong organ, wrong procedure, wrong everything. This isn’t just about a guy slicing the wrong stuff - this is total systemic breakdown that I can’t begin to figure out.
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Well, I am, and you are absolutely correct. None of these incidents are acceptable nor forgivable, and any one of them should have ended his misbegotten career. The fact that he was permitted to continue is utterly bizarre and incomprehensible. I am speechless. (And for me, that is saying something.)
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Has the doctor been charged with anything yet? Manslaughter or negligent homicide would seem appropriate?
Honestly, I kinda suspect a lot of people at that hospital are about to get sued or criminally charged…
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I just wanted to add that the doctor’s suggestion that the organ might have somehow migrated is extra-special. I wonder if he also subscribes to the ancient Greek theory that hysteria in women was caused by a “wandering uterus” roaming around inside the body and causing trouble.
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Look, I don’t know as much as a surgeon should know. I am not 100% sure I could pick out a spleen in a line up.
But I have seen enough anatomy books and gutted deer to know what a liver looks like.
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Another blow to the storied alumni of Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.
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Yeah, exactly. I’m a moderately well versed layman at best on the subject, but if you cut open somebody’s abdomen, I can tell you which piece is the liver. It’s a big, visually distinct organ. And the spleen isn’t anywhere close to the liver; it’s on the other side of the abdomen, and the stomach’s between them. There’s something deeply fucked going on, this isn’t medical error.
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So he was (extremely) late, couldn’t operate a staple gun, and (quite egregiously, from what people are saying here) removed wrong organs. Sounds to me that he was pretty clearly intoxicated, yet that’s not mentioned in the reports. So it’s less about one bad surgeon, and a whole structure filled with people that saw he was in no fit state to operate, was clearly doing things that were obviously wrong and were going to kill the patient, and everyone just stood by and let him do it - no one tried to stop him or even spoke up. That’s way more disturbing than a bad doc, and his losing his license doesn’t resolve the fundamentally fucked-up situation.
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This is SO scary. If I contemplate it much I will never dare to get surgery.
If anyone else needs a lighter moment, the story did give me an excuse to rewatch this old gem about the spleen:
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My daughter is an orthopedic surgeon and it has been an eye opening experience for me to see how hard it is to become a licensed physician. I believe the system is, and was originally designed, to weed out the less qualified and the snake oil sellers who are only in it for the money and prestige. From the astronomical cost of medical school that typically binds students to crushing loads of debt, to the constant high-stakes testing and incredible hourly demands (at very low wages) it’s easy to imagine how it might really break a person. Their profession has a very high suicide rate, especially among female physicians.
This is not to excuse what this person did; he should be held accountable and never be able to practice again. I guess it’s just hard for me to imagine how a person with sufficient training to get a license and some years of practice could make such an incredible mistake.
Fun fact: our government pays for almost all residency training. It seems that the people that benefit the most from this brutal system are the hospital operators and the insurers, and it should not be this way.
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I’d say this needs criminal charges. One sort of manslaughter at minimum.
This is the stuff of a horror movie.
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Are we sure he actually went to medical school? So awful.
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