Eileen Merriman and Carl Shuker discuss their novels A Mistake and The Silence of Snow, which take medical mishaps as a starting point. A highlight of the 2020 Word Christchurch Spring Festival.

Writers Eileen Merriman and Carl Shuker discuss their novels A Mistake and The Silence of Snow which both use medical mishaps as a starting point.

And when it comes to medicine, both of these writers know their stuff: Shuker is a former editor at the British Medical Journal and Merriman is a consultant haematologist at North Shore Hospital.

Their conversation with writer, doctor and podcast host Emma Espiner was a highlight of the 2020 Word Christchurch Spring Festival.

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In Carl Shuker's A Mistake, surgeon Elizabeth Taylor, a 'gifted, driven woman excelling in a male-dominated culture,' deals with the fallout from an operation that goes gravely wrong.

In The Silence of Snow, Eileen Merriman explores the pressurised lives of Anaesthetic Fellow Rory McBride and first-year doctor Jodi Waterstone.

An extract from the conversation:

Emma Espiner:

There's a point in A Mistake where the family of this young woman that's died as the result of a mistake goes to the media and tells the story. And all the clinicians are gathering round the surgeon and saying, "Oh, no. It's not true, it didn't happen that way. You did everything right." But she says, "This is their truth." And it felt to me like a validation that people - patients - have their experience. That you need to validate that. It's not just us deciding what goes on.

Carl Shuker:

This is the weird thing about reporting on what happens at the end of a surgery or a procedure. The actual person who decides is the patient, right? And yet, I can feel your brains going - "However!" This UK cardiac surgeon talks about these two surgeons. One's called HODAD: Hands of Death and Destruction. And he's a lovely guy. People love him. After a cascading series of terrible things he does, patients want photos of him and selfies with his arm around them. Beloved.

The other guy's called the Raptor. And the Raptor is technically brilliant. He does amazing work, produces the best outcome for that patient, but they hate him. He's terrifying. So who is the arbiter?

Eileen Merriman:

Things go wrong sometimes. But it's not always the doctor's fault. And that's where the grey area is. Sometimes something is just going to go wrong. I remember a patient had died last year in our service. They were young and it was terrible. I looked through what had gone on and thought, "this death was not preventable." The disease killed the patient.

About the speakers…

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