Cardiac surgeon Samer Nashef talks with Carl Shuker about risk, mistakes and how heart surgery has changed in this highlight from the 2020 New Zealand Festival writers' programme.

Cardiac surgeon Samer Nashef talks with writer Carl Shuker about risk, mistakes and how heart surgery has changed in this highlight from the 2020 New Zealand Festival writers' programme.

Listen here

Cardiac surgeon Samer Nashef is author of The Naked Surgeon and The Angina Monologues - memoirs that describe life inside the operating theatre: from emergency surgeries to operating in the Palestinian West Bank.

What do you draw upon when faced with life and death situations? What does risk mean? And what advice might a cardiac surgeon give to those going under the knife?

Samer talks illuminatingly about a career devoted to improving clinical practice, and research projects which have sometimes unsettled his colleagues opposed his push towards reporting and transparency.

In this conversation, he speaks with Carl Shuker, whose novel A Mistake explores the story of surgical misadventure.

Samer Nashef:

Part of the reason I write these books is to help people be more informed so they can ask the right questions. The days where medicine was practised along the lines of the kindly doctor putting his arm around you and saying, "I know what's best for you, my good man," and you accept the treatment, have gone.

People have heart operations for two reasons - to feel better, and to live longer. So you need to know what the operation going to do for you in those two respects. So if you're so short of breath you can't climb one flight of stairs and the operation gets rid of these symptoms for you, then you can ask, "Okay, that sounds good, what's the risk of death?" You can measure the risk versus the benefit, and then you can decide whether you want to have the operation or not.

Doctors who do not explain all of that stuff to patients honestly are failing in their duty, and any consent that the patient gives would not be not valid, because it's not properly informed. I think the vast majority of patients are perfectly capable of making decisions. You must have heard the adage "No decision about me without me." You need to have your say in medical treatment. I certainly would want that if I were a patient, so I don't see why other people shouldn't get it.

Carl Shuker:…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details