Don’t you just hate it when you’re under anesthesia for a serious operation, and while you’re unconscious your surgeon lets her 13-year-old daughter take over?
Graz University Hospital in Austria ( Graz is the regional capital of Styria, Austria’s second-largest state) released this apology: “The hospital’s management would like to express its utmost regret and extend its sincere apologies for this incident, and is working to fully clarify the matter.” The “matter” is this: After a 33-year-old man was flown to the hospital with serious head injuries following an accident, the female neurosurgeon, whose name has not been revealed so far, apparently allowed her 13-year-old daughter to scrub in. Maybe it was “take your daughter to work” day or something, but the aspiring distaff Doogie Howser was accused by a whistle-blowing member of the surgical team of actively taking part in the emergency surgery, including drilling a hole in the patient’s skull to relieve pressure from cranial bleeding.
Someone who witnessed this filed an anonymous complaint with the public prosecutor’s office in Graz, triggering an investigation. The patient with the hole in his skull reportedly read about the incident in his newspaper before being informed by police that he had been the victim.
While the investigation is ongoing, the hospital has confirmed that the surgeon whose daughter was apparently allowed into the operating room and a senior surgeon who was there at the time have been suspended from duty (some sources say that the proud mother has been fired.) They may eventually be charged with causing “serious bodily harm.” Five other medical professionals at the scene may eventually be charged with “failure to prevent an act that is punishable by law.”
The hospital, while acknowledging that the teen “may have actively participated in the operation,” wants to make sure everyone knows that she apparently did a great job, because the patient is just fine.
Oh! “No harm no foul” then!
After careful consideration, I have concluded that the surgeon and the surgical team committed a breach of medical ethics. I also suggest that any Austrians out there with health issues that must be treated while they are unconscious should try to find a hospital where children seeking merit badges are not allowed to perform emergency surgery.
[WordPress’s AI aid tells me that this post should be tagged “Germany.” Apparently the bot thinks this is still World War II.]
Ethics Alarms 
The daughter just wanted to be:
“Like a surgeon, cuttin’ for the very time…”
Well, I see how this could easily happen. The joke about physicians that have a god complex is too often true. If you view your patients as ‘normal humans’ who are beneath you, it easily leads to thinking that it is fine to let your 13-year old experiment on one. You also might lie to them ‘for their own good’ or conceal treatments that ‘aren’t for people like them’.
Tell me again how Jimmy Carter’s terminal, nothing-can-be-done brain cancer just disappeared overnight and no one said anything about it.
Then there is the case where a man in Florida was to under go a splenectomy {removal of the spleen}. The surgeon removed his liver {a hepatectomy}. One can survive without a spleen, but death follows a hepatectomy, unless you have another liver to transplant.
The hospital apologised. The family is counting the zeros that need to be on the check after the first digit.