A doctor’s ‘Soul’ is tormented by medical errors

April 15, 2009

Rather than tout the medical conundrums they’ve solved or the lives they’ve saved, some shared tales about patients whom lay readers might think they’d most like to forget: There’s the elderly Holocaust survivor who reluctantly agrees to have surgery for removal of a cancerous colon polyp, only to die three days later from a complication of the operation. There’s the obese accountant who almost bleeds to death when a surgeon slashes his aorta during gallbladder surgery. And there’s the Polish immigrant who, two years after getting a kidney transplant, dies from a side effect of his anti-rejection medication. (A doctor’s ‘Soul’ is tormented by medical errors – USA Today)