We were visiting a relative who had undergone a spine operation in a star hospital and was recuperating at home. All was well since it had ended well. We were required to listen to the story and socialize rather than offer any professional advice. We were not qualified to give any professional advice anyway, since I specialized in Obstetrics and Gynecology and my wife in Ayurvedic Medicine.
"They have a wonderful system for preventing a patient from undergoing a wrong operation" the patient’s husband enthused. "If a right knee is to be replaced, they put a label on the left knee which reads "Not Me".
"But what if they take the patient inside and replace the hip joint instead of the knee joint?" I asked. "Or a shoulder, or even remove a cataract instead?"
"Uh?"
"Do they put ‘Not Me’ labels on all organs in the body other than the one to be operated on?" I explained.
"No."
"Then they can end up doing a wrong operation anyway" I said.
"They know in general that the operation is for a given area, and they put a label just to avoid right-left confusion" he explained.
I knew there was a condition called dyslexia in which there was right-left confusion. Surely the star hospital doctors did not all suffer from it? I did not talk about it, because they would not see the joke.
"They must have a system for not bypassing a wrong coronary artery while performing an operation for coronary artery obstruction" I said gravely. "No one would like a patent artery bypassed and obstructed artery left as it was."
They had not thought about it before.
"But there was a bit of confusion" said the patient. "They called me to the theater at 8:00 A.M. when the surgeon had told us that the operation was scheduled at 10:00 A.M. We explained again and again, but they would not listen. Finally we made them contact the surgeon’s assistant, who told them it was indeed scheduled at 10:00 A.M. Then they took me out of the theater."
That sounded funny. Surely the OT personnel ought to know who was to undergo which operation at a given time.
"When I was being taken back to my room, a nurse came along, grabbed by arm and said ‘Where are you going Mrs. Shah? Come into the theater. Your operation is to be done right away‘ I told her that I was not Mrs. Shah. They put our names on our wrist bands to avoid confusion. Still she got confused."
"Perhaps they out to put boards of ‘Not Me’ around the necks of the relatives of patients. Otherwise someone may wheel a relative into the operation theater and perform an operation on him or her."
When we left, they were considering putting that in the suggestion box of the hospital.
