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New Medical Journal Article Calls for Transparency about Trainees’ Role in Surgeries

Our malpractice attorneys in Seattle report on the New Medical Journal article that calls for transparency about trainees’ role in surgeries.

An article published in the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine calls for medical schools, hospitals, and other healthcare providers to increase transparency regarding the role that trainees play in performing surgeries.

Dr. Chryssa McAlister’s piece, “Breaking the Silence of the Switch – Increasing Transparency about Trainee Participation in Surgery,” was published in the NEJM’s “Perspective” section. In it, Dr. McAlister relates her own experience as a trainee in ophthalmology. She says, “The problem of undisclosed trainee participation in care is not unique to ophthalmology – it is relevant to physicians training to perform procedures of all kinds.”

As the article notes, patients are often not informed that a trainee will perform key parts of their surgeries. This lack of information prevents patients from making informed decisions about their own care. It can also complicate matters when a procedure goes wrong, and the patient must face an uphill battle in order to discover whether medical negligence has occurred.

Few studies have been performed to examine whether medical error rates actually increase when residents perform surgeries, according to the article. One complication in designing such a study involves compensating for the fact that teaching hospitals often receive more difficult surgical cases – in which the risk of error is ordinarily higher – than other types of hospitals, the article states. In a study of consent rates, patients were found to be more likely to consent to a trainee performing their surgery if the procedure was described in detail, but far less likely to consent if the potential complications were described in detail.

The question of consent doesn’t just affect the medical procedure itself. The article cites one legal case in which a court agreed that an attending surgeon had committed battery when the surgeon allowed a resident to operate on a patient without a patient’s consent. When trainees are involved in an incident of medical error, complicated legal questions of consent, information, and responsibility may make recovering compensation more difficult for the injured person.

At Morrow Kidman Tinker Macey-Cushman, PLLC, our Seattle medical malpractice lawyers pool our years of experience and our compassion for our clients in order to secure the compensation each client deserves. If you’ve been injured and you believe a negligent medical error is to blame, contact us today for a confidential case evaluation.