Ghost Surgery in Korea
Student Name
Institution Affiliation
Course
Topic: “Ghost surgery.”
“Ghost surgery in Korea.”
Problem Identification
“Ghost surgery” occurs when a surgeon performs surgery on another surgeon’s patient, and the surgeons are aware of the arrangement, but the patient is not. Dunn (2015) defines Ghost surgery as a situation where surgical assistance, physician assistance, a registered nurse (RN) first assistant, a resident, or another surgeon assists on or carry out an operative or any other invasive procedure without the patient’s consent regales of whether the surgeon who obtained the initial consent was scrubbed in or not. Often, the surgeons do not agree to “switch” until after the patient has already been sedated or anesthetized for the surgery itself.
This kind of surgery especially happened often in Korea. Over the recent, the Korean media covered a series of incidences in which surgeons not in consent to surgical operations operated patients while the patients were under anesthesia. However, while the Ghost Surgery issues have recently gotten media Korean attention, the overall opinion is that the practice of performing surgery on other surgeons’ patients is not a recent development (Hong et al., 2018). Moreover, the practice is not limited to cosmetic surgery but also spread into the other fields of clinical medicine and happens in both teaching hospitals and private hospitals.
There has been a growing outcry on Ghost Surgery, and a public consensus reached concerning the need to punish those performing the practice. Conversely, while the practice is an act of undermining Healthcare ethics at its heart, literary, there are no legal grounds to stop Ghost Surgery in Korea, yet Dunn (2015. Besides, there exists no applicable laws nor court proceedings reached regarding the practice, and there are conflicting opinions concerning which criminal liabilities should be placed on the surgeons performing the practice. Consequently, there is a need to review the laws and regulations applicable to Ghost surgery practice and the requirements for their practice.
Values associated with the problem
The social values associated with performing Ghost Surgery are the ethics in the healthcare field. In medical ethics, the patient is supposed to be aware that a consulting surgeon will perform the surgery, and therefore a substitute surgeon will be operating. Besides, the patient should have a clear explanation of who will perform the surgery. As for a case of large cosmetic hospitals where several surgeons are employed to operate as a team, the team operating should be identified, and the team leader presented to the patient.
Target Audience
The targeted audience in Ghost surgery includes surgical physicians, judicial service commission, medical associations in Korea, as well as any potential medical surgery patient. The surgeon needs to understand the legal framework and punishments associated with performing Ghost Surgery while the judicial service commission should proceed on litigations associated with the practice. Additionally, any patient before admission to the theater ward should be aware of their rights in surgical procedures.
Desired Behavioral outcomes
In respect to ghost surgery, we expect charges of fraud, assault, and battery as well as bodily harms to be applied under the Korean laws. Additionally, charges on violation of medical laws, including false entries or omission of entries in medical records, should be applied. In surgery, a patient grants consent for body harms, and only the physician entrusted with these body harms should operate in the operating room.
References
Dunn, D. (2015). Ghost Surgery: A Frank Look at the Issue and How to Address It. AORN Journal, 102(6), 602-616.
Hong, S. E., Hong, M. K., Park, B. Y., Woo, K. J., & Kang, S. R. (2018). Is the “ghost surgery” the subject of legal punishment in Korea? Annals of surgical treatment and research, 94(4), 167-173.