Multi-tasking in the OR

The question is: should surgeons multi-task in the operating room. Multi-tasking in this case being defined as operating on two patients at the same time. This practice is known as concurrent surgery. To make it happen the chief surgeon relies on assistance from general surgeons or trainees.  The hospitals argue that it saves time and it is an efficient way to deploy the talents of their most in-demand specialists while reducing wasted operating room time.

This has become a major issue at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the country's leading hospitals. A cadre of MGH's surgeons assert that it jeopardizes patient safety and prevents patients from getting the best medical care possible. But perhaps a bigger concern is this practice is known by the doctors and the nurses and the anesthesiologists and the billing clerks and everyone else. That is, everybody but the patient.