An Austrian surgeon allegedly let his teenage daughter drill a hole in a patient’s skull.
Following a forestry accident in January, a 33-year-old man was flown by air ambulance to Graz University Hospital, Styria, southeastern Austria, with serious head injuries, according to Kronen Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper.
He needed emergency surgery, but the doctor allegedly let his 13-year-old daughter take part in operating on him.
The newspaper reported that she even drilled a hole in the patient’s skull.
While the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work and investigations by the Graz public prosecutor’s officer against the entire surgical team are continuing.
It wasn’t until April that an anonymous complaint was logged to the public prosecutor’s office about the allegations, the newspaper reported.
The alleged victim initially learned about the case in the media before later being told by authorities he was a witness in an investigation.
Bring your kid to work day?
It sounds like the patient is doing fine.
That’s not the point really, now is it?
The point of medicine? I think it is.
So you’d feel fine if the pilot of the plane announces after the landing that his kid did the landing?
Yo did she do a good job tho?
The article said the operation was completed without issue, so sounds good to me.
It said “the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work”. Who is saying it didn’t have issues though? If the patient still isn’t able to work, it sounds potentially like there may have potentially been issues. It may have actually not had issues, but I’m not taking the surgeon or hospital’s word for it, assuming it is them who said this.
With a serious head injury you ain’t going back to work in the morning. Not defending the surgeon, but the guy probably might never work again because of the injury. Hell, his whole personality might be changed because of it. And there is no way to know how the operation might have turned out or not.
Oh, for sure. It doesn’t say how long it’s been though. I’m just saying don’t take the word if a person who hid the fact they had a child drill into someone’s skull. There’s really no way to know how it went.
Did she get paid?
Or is this yet another case of a minor being exploited for unpaid labor.
She’s a goddamn hero who saved a man’s LIFE and her father’s CAREER after he was tired and emotional at work and could not keep his hands steady enough to perform brain surgery
Not enough caps
Nor noodles.
When “Bring Your Child to Work Day” goes wrong.
Aeroflot 593
Technically, it went really well.
I mean we called this an apprenticeship for a thousand years or so, right?
I don’t understand either if this is even a problem.
Allowing a literal child with 0 medical training/education to drill into/near a vital organ of someone experiencing an acute head injury while they are unconscious and without their consent? Naw, nothing wrong there at all.
Y’all just jealous she’s a brain surgeon with a 100% survival rate at 13.
Well, I’m not a brain surgeon. So, I don’t take myself as qualified to make that risk assessment. I agree that all you said up to ‘without consent’ is a very reasonable starting point to think about it, the answer to it should be made by whomever is qualified to answer it.
As for consent, no pacirnt gives direct consent to who’s in/helping the surgery besides the head surgeon. Why do you claim its need in this case?
There is a trauma surgeon in the article stating she shouldn’t have even been allowed in the room, let alone allowed to drill into a patient’s skull.
Is it less ethical or more ethical if the patient had given informed consent?
No patient gives consent to who is helping in the surgery because there is an implicit understanding that it will only be performed by qualified licensed personnel. There are multiple regulating bodies that prevent unqualified people from practicing in a professional setting. So, it is not unreasonable to make this assumption.
My argument is that it would be one thing if this was a simple superficial elective surgery where the patient consented to allowing the doctor’s unqualified child “to give it a go” popping a pimple or something. It is significantly worse because it was a life-threatening emergency procedure where the doctor elected to increase the likelihood of failure/harm/death while the patient was in a position where they couldn’t consent to the doctor taking that unnecessary risk.
I also lack basic judgment, and have no idea if there was a problem here
I too like to partake into cynical sarcastic self loathing , at times.
And I do like the layered ambiguity to whom your comment is addressed.
Sounds like you’ve had brain surgery by a 13 year old.
Sounds like you just want an snswer.
How else is she going to learn?
Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few skulls
Not the first news story regarding weird stuff happening while people are under anesthesia.
There’s a reason we call neurosurgery the arts and crafts department.
I’m confused why she was there in the first place
Obviously it was take your kid to work day. Really it’s no different than letting them fly the plane, drive the Amtrak train, or run the hose on the riot police truck during a riot.
(I’ll let you figure out which one of those examples is real)
I’m gonna say “drive the train”
Oof, it was fly the plane. It’s okay though they never did it again.
The last time I remember children being invited to a high-intensity workplace ended up with them fatally crashing an airplane with 75 people on board.
Whilst this is absolutely true, I think it’s more constructive to focus on the failure in design that led to the confusion in the cockpit.
There is no doubt that children in the cockpit contributed to the incident, but that incident could have happened with some other distraction.
The failure for the aircraft to correctly notify the pilot of the change in autopilot configuration was clearly very dangerous.
Agreed. “Mistakes were made - but let’s blame the dumb dad who had his moron 15-year-old progeny bump the autopilot into total submission.” smh
But think of the shareholders, they could have been the real victims /s
I missed this in the news, then saw link refers to Kronen Zeitung report which is not a great newspaper to cite so thought for sure it cannot be entirely true? But it is! And here another link from Die Presse (google translate works fine here) which tells us it was not a jerk dad who brought his kid to drill holes but an idiot mom.
I dont get how the surgeon thought this was okay. When I have a regular check up I have to give permission for a student doctor to simply sit in on my appointment.
Having a 13 year old drill a hole in your head is waaay beyond that. I hope thst doctor has their liscence revoked. They clearly don’t give a single fuck about their patients.
I think the biggest problem is that she was in no way insured to do that.
If somemebody drills a hole into my skull I dont give a shit about their insurance.
Insurance protects them not me. This is absolutely about the doctor putting the patient into a huge unnecessary risk without the patients consent.
Let’s say something actually went wrong with the operation. Obviously you can sue the hospital, and you’d certainly win that. When you go to sue the doctor for being a fuckwad, his insurance isn’t going to cover it. And while I’m sure he’s got some money, he can hide it dick around about it just owe you a lot of money.
No, there’s a good reason they require doctors to have insurance.
Yes but “the biggest problem” is most certainly not the lack of insurance for the daughter. Its a untrained child playing with the live of a patient.
lol your mistype makes it look like you’re trying to set a legal precedence to collect insurance by claiming it was yourself drilling the hole in your head.
Always say yes to the student doctors and nurses, proud to do my part, but I damned near made a nurse cry one day. LOL, she was wrecked.
I was in the hospital, think they were changing my IV to the other arm? Anyway, that was the sort of thing she was trying to stick me for. This poor woman couldn’t nail a vein after SIX tries, gave up utterly humiliated. She keep poking and missing and apologizing, poking and missing and apologizing, getting more flustered each time. I was cold stoned on opiates, thought it was rather amusing, though the pain was getting a little annoying. Still, kept telling her it was cool, she’s there to learn and I was happy to help.
They bring another nurse in and he had to make two passes. Y’all, you can clearly see my forearm veins. Maybe I was a little dehydrated or something to do with the drugs?
Don’t surgeries usually have other assistants in the OR as well? Nobody was like “uh, hell no” to this guy bringing a child in and then letting her drill a hole in someone?
Plenty of other people in there, my ex-wife was a scrub, did nothing but OR. But you do not cross a surgeon, and especially not in his domain. Hence the anonymous complaint that kicked this off.
These are the policies of take-your-daughter-to-work day. The doctor’s hands were tied.
I feel like there was something like this in one of the Naked Gun movies. If not, there should’ve been.
Lucky, I didn’t get to drill holes during take your kid to work day
If your father was a porn star, then this was a good call.
When the hands on experience goes too far
