Ethical Challenges in the Operating Room, Part II

Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a two-part series on ethics in the operating room. The first installment was published in the October 2016 issue.

Scenario

The ethical scenario published in part 1 of “Ethics in the Operating Room” imagined that you served as chair of your medical center’s ethics committee and provided guidance and recommendations to the center’s leadership on issues of ethical concern in the operating room.

In that scenario, your comments to the leadership dealt with informing patients about the roles of the various surgical team members participating in the patient’s surgery, along with the ethics of overlapping, concomitant/concurrent, and sequenced surgical procedures. The next major topic on which the leadership would like your input involves the professional and ethical care of patients in the perioperative period, particularly the interaction of the surgeon with the patient at the bedside.