Medical Assistant Accidentally Cuts Heart Surgeon During Surgery, Who Leaves Abruptly, Dodges The Bullet When He Returns Minutes Later

There are a small handful of scenarios where people’s whole life flashes before their eyes. Though, nobody expects it to happen after accidentally injuring a surgeon who’s performing open heart surgery and who then leaves the operating room without any instructions whatsoever.

Now, sure, this sounds more like career auto-unaliving, but it might as well apply to life too because of how much shame and fear the unintentionally bloodthirsty medical assistant had to endure in those long few minutes until, luckily, the surgeon returned.

More Info: Reddit

Surgical Assistant u/RnsRTheCoolest recently shared a very, very, very big screw-up they had during work in the r/TIFU subreddit, a place for people to share their screw-up stories without censorship.

The story goes that OP typically works with a number of different surgeons, one of whom is a world-class surgeon, an old-timer, calm and collected type of guy. OP would work with the doc every once in a while and all was well.

Until now, that is.

OP was helping said surgeon out in the OR when he was hands-deep in open-heart surgery. The surgical assistant had to do some hemostat clamping action, a routine and imprecise maneuver, to seal the deal (or some surgical deal). However, that didn’t really go well as the hand-eye coordinatory trajectory was set and as OP was executing their plan of action, the surgeon moved his hands in an unexpected way. And this in turn led to an accident.

In particular, the clamp OP was holding sunk into the surgeon’s pinky knuckle, immediately prompting blood. He lurched back, screaming in pain, and exclaiming the only bit of dialogue throughout the entire story: “Now why the [froop] did you do that for?!?” And then he stormed out of the operating room.

OP and everyone else involved were speechless, standing silently (“The entire room was pindrop quiet.”), not knowing what to do without a surgeon, all the while the patient’s chest was very much still open. Several very long and very nerve-racking minutes pass by when there are finally signs of movement in the other room. Yes, the surgeon resolved his bleeding knuckle problem, rescrubbed, and came back to finish the job. Very furious, but it was still a relief for everyone else.

The remainder of the operation was very, very quiet. And not the I’m hunting wabbits quiet, but dead serious quiet. OP did apologize profusely once it was all over, though there is no mention of how the surgeon reacted then and there. The two did continue to work on other surgeries together.

The Reddit community was very supportive. Many pointed out that it’s human to make mistakes, and even more so if it was an unexpected movement from the surgeon. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a massive gash, but rather a rip in the skin that was still problematic in an OR setting—contamination and all—but the OR has seen way worse.

Others were in a more joke-y mood, pointing out how they are scheduled to undergo surgery and reading this is anything but reassuring. Yet others were, for a very slight second, confused about the title of the post, as it led them to believe that it was the patient who clamped the surgeon. Would have definitely been an interesting story to tell at a friends’ get-together.

The post garnered nearly 20,000 upvotes (with a 93% positivity ratio), generated a discussion with over 1,100 comments and even got a handful of Reddit awards. You can read the entire post in its context on Reddit here.

And now, to fuel your nightmares, here are some stats during surgeries. A few years ago, this one study studied incidents in the OR, specifically when spine surgery was being done. Of the 415 total surgeries, 172 of them were problematic (that’s 41%). The primary hiccups on the job were medication-related, line and tube problems, and falls and slips. This might seem relatively minor, but complications always have a non-zero chance of happening and that can lead to anything from ulnar nerve palsy to tooth damage.

And that’s just scratching the surface, as accidents during surgery can have long-lasting effects. Victims of medical accidents in this study elaborated that, even a year after, many of them felt more distressed than those who had serious accidents or experienced bereavement. They also pointed out that they measure their pain levels, even a year after surgery, at the level of untreated post-op pain. We won’t go into the whole psychological adjustment that they had to go through, noting that they were extremely under-informed and felt a lack of empathy for the situation from the medical staff.

But medicine is always on the move forward with new medication and treatments coming out all the time, technology taking over parts of if not most of many procedures, and the level of education and skill training among medical doctors only going up from here. So, don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Hopefully.

With all of that said and done, we’d love to hear your thoughts on anything and everything you’ve read here today in the comment section below!