I’ve never had brain surgery (that I remember?), nor have I had any immediate family or friends who have had brain surgery. But I would think, if I needed brain surgery, my top priority would be a surgeon and hospital team with a record of doing the surgery right.
Nevertheless, there’s a hospital in the country which has a record of sorts that would make me go elsewhere — they seem to have perfected the concept of “wrong-site brain surgery”: Three times in the last year surgeons at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, R.I., operated on the WRONG parts of patients’ brains. If you read the article, you’ll see the problem stems from surgeon arrogance, carelessness, and intimidation of nurses and other surgical team members.
My highly unscientific suggestion for you if you need brain surgery and live in Providence might be — move to Connecticut! Or New York! Or California! Or Nebraska! Or … just about anywhere else.
I used to joke around and say the one thing you never want to hear a brain surgeon say is, “Oops!” I guess I’ll add to that: “Where?”
All kidding aside, how can anyone excuse or explain such horrible accidents? If the brain surgeon involved is so arrogant as to intimidate those he works with to the point they won’t correct him or stop him in such cases — he has no business doing surgery, and such cowardly, care-nothing assistants have no business working in surgery with him. We ought to have a medical system in this country that 1) allows for serious civil and even criminal penalties for such people, and, 2) turns such brain surgeons immediately into “former” or “retired” brain surgeons.
Ah, well, what do I know? I’m just a guy who reads the paper — and tries to protect his brain!
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