Nuerosurgeons usually deal with real medicine, but every so often they get confused when they speak with psychiatrists. This is one of the more reasonable explanations for this reported series of mistakes at a hospital in Rhode Island. As reported in The Day
The head of the neurosurgery department at Rhode Island Hospital has stepped aside while officials investigate three incidents in which surgeons operated on the wrong side of a patient's head.
John Duncan will still see patients but will not run the department, Gail Carvelli, a spokeswoman for the hospital's parent company, Lifespan, said Thursday.
“He has voluntarily stepped aside during this investigative process,” she said.
Since February, three different brain surgeons at the hospital have operated on the wrong side of a patient's head, most recently on Friday. In two cases, the doctors did not realize the errors until after they opened the skull. On Friday, the doctor realized the problem after he made an incision in the scalp.
An elderly man died in August a few weeks after a surgeon mistakenly operated on the wrong side of his head. David Gifford, head of the state Department of Health, said an autopsy was pending, but the department believes his death was not connected to the surgery.
In the other two cases, the patients were OK, the department has said.
The hospital this week was fined $50,000, reprimanded and ordered to make a series of changes including better training and more safeguards.
Rhode Island Hospital is the largest hospital in the state and serves as the teaching hospital for Brown University's Alpert Medical School. It is a private, not-for-profit hospital and performs more than 25,000 surgeries every year, according to its Web site
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