Imagine you need an operation. You're trusting the best medical professionals to do it right. You're put under anesthesia. Your life is in their hands—and the head doctor simply falls asleep. Maybe others can give better insight. Admittedly, I've never been hospitalized for anything, and blessedly never needed major surgery, so I can't relate, but lapses like this probably have happened before. Who am I kidding? It's a hospital—I bet a lot of this stuff happens all the time. It's a 2016 case. This doctor was due to perform emergency ankle surgery and simply never showed up. Why? Well, you can't make this up—and the punishment seems a bit light. You decide.
The dude fell asleep. No, I'm not kidding. The doctor in question left the operating room to eat something in his car, fell asleep, and he missed the surgery. This fiasco occurred in November 2016. He's been fined. He needs to take a few courses in professionalism. The fine seems a bit soft though—only $6,000 (via NBC Boston):
Massachusetts' medical board has reprimanded and fined the head of spine surgery at Boston Medical Center after he left an operating room to eat lunch in his car and then fell asleep and missed an emergency surgery in 2016.
According to a consent order released Monday by the Board of Registration in Medicine, Dr. Tony Tannoury, 54, admitted to falling asleep in his car in November 2016.
[…]
Tannoury was fined $6,000, ordered to complete five education credits in professionalism and review regulations for supervisors, the board said.
Luckily, no one died. There's always a risk of death when it comes to surgery and anesthesia. How often does this happen?
Now, Alec Baldwin has been in the news for his prop gun mishap that killed the cinematographer of his new film, but prior to that, he was in "Dr. Death," which detailed how a bunch of medical professionals stopped a psychopathic ex-neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch who is now serving a life sentence for maiming his patients. The man was nuts but was able to operate on multiple patients for years and evade accountability. If psycho doctors can evade capture, how often do they doze off and miss surgeries?