A paper worth reading
Dr Cutbush completed the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons "Operating With Respect" course, and read the paper discussed below on the same day.
What the study found
The course faculty presented data indicating that surgeons with higher levels of complaints recorded against them have higher post-operative complication rates. The most notable of the papers cited is a 2017 study published in JAMA Surgery.
That study examined 32,000 patients who underwent surgery and looked at the number of unsolicited patient complaints recorded about each surgeon in the period before the procedure. Patients of surgeons in the highest quartile for complaints had a post-operative complication rate of 13.9%.
An association, not a proven cause
It is worth being precise about what this kind of study can and cannot show. It is observational: it identifies an association between complaint history and complication rate, not proof that one causes the other. A number of explanations could produce the same pattern, including differences in communication within the surgical team, in case selection and complexity, or in how concerns are raised and handled in a given unit.
That caveat does not make the finding uninteresting. An association of that size between how a surgeon behaves towards people and what happens to their patients is worth taking seriously, whatever the mechanism turns out to be.
Why it matters
The implication drawn at the course was a straightforward one: how good we are as surgeons is related to how we treat people. Surgery is a team activity, and theatre teams that communicate well, in which concerns can be raised without difficulty, are better placed to prevent errors than teams in which they cannot.