reflections from a surgeon

I think the thing I was most struck by today was that there was so much discussion around surgery but not a whole lot of representation from the field itself. The Lewis Blackman case (which prominently featured the postoperative course of a young boy), the teaching case about the retained lap in the liver transplant, and some of the slides about the communication styles of physicians all centered around surgical cases/ issues.  A bad outcome in a surgical case is often very dramatic (unexpected death in an otherwise healthy child, retained foreign body requiring an additional operation). It’s easy to criticize surgeons as overly confident, arrogant, and/ or reckless- especially when things go badly. However, I think what people forget is that it takes a certain amount of confidence and arrogance to be able to cut into another person’s body. This tension between confidence and humility is what makes… Continue reading →