Surgeons' attitudes to intraoperative death: questionnaire survey

Abstract

Intraoperative death is a situation any surgeon might encounter. A news item in the BMJ discusses the outcome of an inquiry by Sheriff Albert Sheenan into an incident that involved the death of a patient having elective surgery. The inquiry recommended that a surgeon should not operate for a period of 24 hours after such an event because “the surgeon is … not in the frame of mind to continue to operate that day.”1 After the intraoperative death of a trauma patient at our own hospital, we were advised by a defence association that the surgeons involved should not operate for the next 24 hours. Although we considered this advice surprising, as the patient had sustained injuries likely to be fatal irrespective of any intervention, we duly followed it. A later literature search failed to …