Medicine has too much variability, says Aggravated DocSurg, and can’t be compared to flying a plane:
Now let’s compare the pilot to, oh, I don’t know, a general surgeon (what I lack in imagination is made up by a complete deficiency of imagination), and that surgeon will do four operations today. The first is a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on a healthy 50 year old; the second is an incisional hernia repair on an obese, diabetic, hypertensive 70 year old; the third is a colectomy for cancer on a reasonably healthy 65 year old, who had an MI last year; and the fourth is an urgent laparoscopic cholecystectomy — but that patient is put at the end of the day, because she is on Coumadin and needs to have her anticoagulation reversed, carefully though because of her CHF. Please don’t laugh — I have these types of days not infrequently.That, to my way of thinking, is sort of having the pilot above start out flying on a nice sunny day in a 737, switching to an aging 747 that’s not in the best of shape for the next flight, flying as carefully and straight in a thunderstorm for the third flight, and then trying to safely land a Sopwith Camel with one wheel missing at the end of the fourth flight.
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