Complications and Mishaps in Anesthesia: Cases – Analysis

Book Preface

Do we learn enough from our errors?
Probably yes, but we are not learning enough from the errors of others! Our knowledge increases during our professional life as we master more and more critical situations. This is called experience. Unfortunately, it takes time before we reach a certain level of experience. We just need too many events, and we need errors to happen: errors trigger emotions which trigger learning. Errors are very useful if we are ready to accept personal failure as part of our life. Working in anesthesiology very often means working alone or working in small teams. The occasions when we can learn from errors of others are limited. Thus, we are learning enough from our errors but not enough from the errors which others experience. The first intention of this book is to reduce this gap by sharing with you our experiences with complications and mishaps in our daily anesthetic practice. The basis of the presented cases were real life events. They were modified such that recognition is impossible. Similarities with real persons are therefore purely incidental. Learn from our errors and do it better!

Doing it better is not easy… The second intention of this book is to assist you to reduce errors. The given tips or clues are not limited to medical facts but also include organizational and nontechnical factors and skills. Latter aspects are included in the case debriefings. In most cases more than one aspect could be discussed, but we focused the debriefings and limited the discussions per case, also to avoid redundancies.

Learning by error is important, but why? Because emotions are involved, negative or positive ones. These emotions influence our perception, our thinking, and our interpretation. Situations, circumstances, and facts immediately become part of our long-term memory. Accessing information, which was stored emotionally, is easy and fast. So the intention of this book is to stimulate you emotionally while presenting the facts – while you learn. The cases therefore tell you the story behind the scenes. These epic parts provide detailed information of the circumstances. Try to get emotionally involved and feel with the protagonists! Maybe you will later remember the facts because you still think about the story behind the scenes.

The second edition of the book was published in 2012 in German. The American edition was completely revised and new aspects of the rapid changing medical knowledge were included. Also, medicolegal and specific professional aspects were adapted.