exactly. is this guy just a fraud and the hospital wont admit theyve been scamed? germany had such a guy, actually doing surgery (luckily nothing bad happend to patients til he got busted);
Werner Lang has had to endure a lot of ridicule in recent weeks. Since the impostor Christian E. was sentenced to prison, Lang has had to answer all kinds of questions: How can it be that a trained banker has been involved in the operating table more than 190 times? How could someone with two fake doctorates interfere in the research process? Why should someone be entrusted with a scientific paper who is too clumsy to write his alleged certificates himself without spelling mistakes?
To me it seems as if he’s a psychopath, but I admit, I’m not a clinical psychologist, and I don’t pretend to be one in any sense of that term. Heck, even alleging that a man who somehow qualified to become a surgeon and presumably performed many successful surgeries, and who then one day slices out a liver from a victim’s body and insists that it is a spleen, might be a psychopath, I understand that crosses the line, so if anyone objects, I will without question withdraw my allegation. Anyway, I wish there were a crime attached to this deed so he might spend some time in jail. By the way, this whole label the thing a spleen thing reminds me of a former boss of mine.
I think there was a lot of “do your job or get fired” inflicted on the OR staff that complained/ attempted to intervene. Practically, unless they were prepared to bodily remove him–
and then what? Who’s going to close? If there were any decent surgeons in the building they wouldn’t come near that case. What do you tell the family? That’s partially the sticking point it always comes down to “we can’t do anything otherwise we’d have to admit there was a problem” When you KNOW the administration will swiftly and eagerly throw you under the bus instead of dealing with the problem because it’s easier and has less bad PR your options are extremely limited. It’s easy to say you’d call security until you realize that it’s better than even odds that YOU’LL be the one escorted out (minus your job)
Can surgeons be late for theatre for good reasons? Definitely, they might be stuck in another surgery. That’ll usually be communicated to the waiting team though.
Is there such a thing as ectopic adrenal tissue? Yes. But definitely should raise questions about whether you are in the right spot.
Does the spleen look VAGUELY like the liver… Uh… Hmm… I mean, to a layperson they’re… Similar-ish in colour? Pretty different texture and shape though.
Do surgeons fire staple guns blindly? Look, I’m not a surgeon but I’ve certainly never observed that… Sounds bad
…yeah, I don’t know what kind of impairment this guy has, but I would guess that he is, in fact, impaired.
In my jurisdiction (not USA) we have pretty strict rules that would mandate several people in the room reporting it to the medical registration board, if it were believed he was practicing while intoxicated or so impaired, or simply on the basis of the severity of the deviation from standards of practice. That’s separate from mandated reporting of the actual events to hospital executive, and mandatory reporting to the coroner to consider investigation. Not doing so could cost your own licence (technically, I’m not sure how often that’s enforced in practice).
It’s definitely an issue that surgery is particularly hierarchical as medical fields go. It’d take a pretty brave and senior nurse to put their hands up and report, and it’d be even harder in-theatre to intervene, though it can happen. Not excusing that - just noting the problem.
I wonder how isolated this guy was working?
Same. They made me use a sharpie to draw a big arrow on my leg pointing to the correct knee. And I wondered how my knee is more critical than this poor person’s liver.
They asked you to indicate the proper knee. They did not make you also indicate “not my shoulder or nose.” This is more like the territory we are in here.
