Whenever someone is scheduled for an operation, the assigned nurse is required to fill out a “pre-op checklist” to ensure that all safety and quality metrics are being adhered to. Before the patient is allowed to be wheeled into the OR we make sure the surgical site is marked, the consents [...]

Last week Kevin Pho wrote about a physician in Boston, Alexandra Thran, who was disciplined by both her hospital and the state medical board for writing about a trauma patient she had seen. Although Dr. Thran hadn’t divulged the patient’s name, enough information was conveyed that allowed others in the [...]

In response to stepping down as incoming Preseident of the American College of Surgeons, Lazar Greenfield MD fired off an unrepentant, angry-as-hell email to several national media organizations on Wednesday. Here’s the full text (with my comments in italics):“The reports surrounding my resignation as President-elect of the American College of [...]

This is awesome. As if there aren’t enough shady financial instruments out there for nefarious money making purposes. We now enter the era of the hedge fund- financed medical malpractice lawsuit.I get it. Mounting a malpractice trial is expensive. You have to spend hours upon hours (at [...]

I’m sure there are manifold reasons for a hospital CEO to pull down 7 figures, even at “non-profit” hospitals. But when you have states chopping Medicaid left and right, when Congress faces an imminent debate on the inevitability of entitlement cuts (i.e. Medicare) in order to achieve some semblance of fiscal sanity, is it altogether justifiable for appointed leaders of non-profits to be so generously compensated?

I’m not some bleeding heart porkophile. Nevertheless I found myself feeling strangely disturbed by the article. Nine pigs were basically sliced and diced and then euthanized in order to determine that…. some new-fangled anti-adhesion barrier (which costs 800 bucks per 10 cm square, incidentally) may lead to a decrease in intra-abdominal adhesion formation? Really? That’s it?

Pauline Chen had apost in the Times last week about surgical informed consent. Informed consent is an important part of the surgeon/patient communication transaction. Surgeon reviews the proposed operation, the rationale behind it, and the possible complications. For example— a patient comes in with biliary colic. We describe the anatomy and pathology. We aver that [...]

The New York Times has jumped all over a couple of recent scientific articles asserting that certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) provide equivalent care as MD anesthesiologists. Already, it is legal in 15 states for CRNAs to dispense anesthesia without the overarching supervision of a physician. It isn’t difficult to see where all this is heading.

In the most unsurprising development of health care reform—-the Obama iteration that awkwardly tries to fuse private and public coverage plans, thereby preserving the billion dollar health care “insurance” industry—- it has become apparent that the increased costs employers expect to pay for health care have simply been passed on to [...]

The life of a general surgeon is one fraught with contingency, soul-crushing doubt, unexpected disaster, and overwhelming stress. We wade into shark infested waters every time we press scalpel into flesh. Your eyes better be wide open and your head on a swivel. There’s no such thing as routine in general surgery