How easy it is to be silent: Apology for a surgical error

What does not weigh on Dr. John Riley's conscience is silence. [Names have been changed.] As tempting as it was to tell Thelma Jones and her son that a biopsy was planned of her right lung and that the pneumothorax was the unfortunate outcome of a necessary procedure, John Reilly chose to tell the truth. I admire him for that. I know just how easy it is to be silent.

Many years ago, I witnessed an Ob-Gyn make a terrible mistake during a routine hysterectomy. I stood in the Operating Room retracting a patient's belly while he carelessly hacked out her ovary. I stood next to her hospital bed as he lied to her about his mistake.

"We had to take the right ovary, Gina."

"Why? What happened?"

"Jesus Christ, Gina. It was a mess in there."

"I'm sorry."

She apologized. As if it was her fault that he had butchered her ovary.

He offered no other explanation. Yet I did not speak up when this incident occurred. I was a medical student with my career in front of me; he was an attending surgeon. I participated in the complicity of silence.

Advice: Ask for a clear explanation if a medical procedure has not gone as expected.

Browse for related stories in the index at the very bottom of this page, or read a patient-doctor miscommunication story.

Thanks to Dr. Helena Studer for the source article in issue 33 of Creative Nonfiction.