There was no danger of harm. In fact, though this was a stupid decision by the surgeon, I'm of the opinion that he should not be removed from his post.

He was proud of his handiwork and signed off on it. Have we enough skilled surgeons to remove them for a harmless boast? Reprimanded, sure, but removing him from his post is both an over reaction and unfair to society which is already lacking in skilled healthcare professionals.

His "stupid decision" shows a complete lack of judgement. I would never trust anyone with my life if they are capable of doing something as absurd as this.

I would, especially if I was on a waiting list. A punishment that does not remove him from his job would benefit everyone in this case.

People who are specialists in one thing might make terrible judgements in other things. Your excellent judgement in designing software doesn't make you an excellent driver.

When my bad judgment as a driver impacts my decisions as a programmer too, I don't expect that to slide.

If his ego/vanity changes the actions that he takes when performing surgery, that sounds like a problem to me.

He is not just a mechanic operating on inanimate objects, his "handiwork" was the insides of a person. Letting vanity get to your head and signing your initials inside of them is a gross violation of the autonomy of that person -- they never consented to such a thing.

The guy should lose his authorization for this.

It is part of a bad culture among medical doctors, where they both torture themselves and apparently others as well. The profession as a whole should really wake up or they will face a similar reaction as taxi drivers did with the introduction of Uber and Lyft. Nobody want’s to be forced to be a customer in businesses that supersede customer trust for ego.

Except this isn't how we make decisions in our society. What if he hits a kid with his car, should we let him off the hook there too because 'he is needed by society'

Although, this does happen[1]:

> Oxford student given suspended sentence for stabbing boyfriend

> Judge had reportedly earlier told Lavinia Woodward a prison term could damage her prospects of becoming a heart surgeon

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/sep/25/oxford-student-l...

You're comparing a victimless "crime" with injuring someone. That doesn't make any sense.

If it's important to the analogy then lets say we caught him driving super drunk but he hadn't hurt anyone yet. Should we let him off the hook?

That's a poor analogy, because people driving super drunk have the potential to cause very great harm.

If we're sticking to car analogies he wrote his name in the dirt on the back of a truck, but the dirt was abrasive and so he also scratched his initials into the paint.

So he didn't increase the risk to the patient in any way, however small?

That is, a patient who gets signed upon and one who doesn't following the exact same procedure for the rest are at an identical risk?

You think branding people is a victimless crime?

If he wants to leave handiwork he should be an artist or something. Don't be a surgeon.

Apparently there are enough surgeons that this guy has plenty of time for extracurricular activities inside an open incision.

I think that depends on your definition of "harmed". If I used a laser to burn my initials into your underarm in a place that no one would ever see it.... would you say that I harmed you?

Is it certain that a couple inches of laser beam scar tissue in a liver has not, and will not in the future cause any medical issues for the patients in question?

> Is it certain that a couple inches of laser beam scar tissue in a liver has not, and will not in the future cause any medical issues for the patients in question?

It could well lead to Cirrhosis of the liver. Not to mention Adhesion that could become painful. I'm not too sure how likely either issue is, however I wouldn't like to assume that scarring your liver is going to be completely free of complications... Though by the time you're having an intraoperative procedure done on your liver, you're already not free from complications.

>It could well lead to Cirrhosis of the liver. Not to mention Adhesion that could become painful.

Do you have any medical background ? Did you ever use a coagulator ? Or ever saw a liver with your own eyes and the eventual scars those get because of routinely occurring small infarctii or such ? I doubt so, as this is utter bullshit.

> I'm not too sure how likely either issue is

Not likely at all in this universe

> Do you have any medical background ?

Briefly, working as a theatre technician in coronary intervention. We used diathermy etc in the lab.

It's not intended to be a permanent scar. These marks are routinely used to mark out areas of the liver to be worked on, and they should normally heal.

In this case he did it to a patient and the marks didn't heal. (By definition he works on patients who's livers are less likely to heal), but it didn't cause any further harm.

I got laser surgery done and that left a big scar on my neck, can confirm 10 years later I'm still functioning properly. Now the liver is different but from reading the article it seems this was just a stupid non-life-threatening decision taken by a surgeon who thought he was painting on canvas

Yes, but my question wasn't "What if you had an unavoidable scar from laser surgery", my question was "would you feel harmed if I burnt my initials into some not-normally visible part of your skin" for no other reason than to say that I was there?

Even minor scarring adds to the bodies burden in healing, so I think it's hard to definitively say that the laser inscribed initials did not cause any harm or increased risk at all. After all, these were not strong, healthy people -- they were sick enough to require liver surgery... and one of them had to have followup treatment which is when the initials were discovered.