Double booked.
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@axtremus, I don't think so. Malpractice requires 3 proofs.
- An injury occurred
- The injury was a result of the physician's care
- The care was outside the "standard of care." That standard is determined by expert witnesses and policies of the department and hospital.
That said, heart surgery is pretty mundane stuff, other than when it's not. Almost any well-trained resident/fellow/associate can do the mundane parts:
- Harvest a vein
- Open the chest, expose the heart
- Cannulate the great vessels and be ready to start CPB (Heart-Lung machine)
Here's the non mundane parts.
Sew the anastomoses (hookups) from the aorta to the obstructed coronary vessels. Or open the aorta or left atrium and replace the aortic or mitral valves.
Semi-mundane.
Wean the patient from CPB with the gas-passer giving whatever drugs necessary will give the heart the "kick" that it needs to work on its own.
Mundane:
- Close leg (or other vein harvest site)
- Wire the chest closed, along with all other tissues and transport to ICU.
I've been told that at Texas (don't remember if it was this place) they would "stagger starts" so that by 9 AM Cooley (or whoever) could to the non-mundane parts in Room 1 while Room 2 was just finishing their "mundane" parts. He'd walk across the hall and do the non-mundane parts. Meanwhile. Room 1 is back to mundane, and Room 3 is getting into their mundane.
That's how Cooley could claim that he did 6-8 open heart surgeries a day.
Is this bad medicine? I dunno. It's certainly efficient, but I always found it a bit...deceitful. Also, when you're in Room 2 and things in Room 1 go south, what are you going to do? Which patient gets abandoned?
Our small place, with one heart surgeon and no assistants never had such experiences.
