Surgery error leads doc to public mea culpa

This week I read an article on how a doctor from Massachusetts performed an incorrect surgery on an elderly lady, and how he openly talks about it to provent future mistakes. The main points of the article are:

• Dr. David C. Ring, a hand and arm surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital operated incorrectly on the hand of a 65-year-old woman with a painful “trigger finger.”
• "In 2008, the most recent year with complete records, 116 wrong-site surgeries, up from 93 in 2007, were recorded by the Joint Commission, a national hospital accrediting agency. Preliminary reports logged 137 wrong-site surgeries from March 2009 through June 2010"
• the patient whose ring finger on her left hand was stiff, painful and sometimes got stuck in a flexed position,has a condition known as "trigger finger.
• Ring performed a carpal-tunnel-release operation, instead of a trigger-finger-release procedure.
• "Although he apologized to the patient, waived her fees and successfully performed the correct surgery, Ring said nothing could undo the mistake. But by writing and talking about it publicly, he hoped to break the silence that still surrounds doctors’ errors — and prevent them in the future"

Dr. David Ring is a hand and arm surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. Through a series of mishaps he accidently performed carpal-tunnel surgery instead of trigger-finger release surgery on a 65 year old patient. He chose to talk about it openly to prevent future mistakes like his own.

I think it is very brave of Dr. Ring to talk about his mistake to the public. It would be very hard because he got a lot of grief from the patient and her family about the ordeal. However, he is choosing to look at the positive things he can accomplish by speaking out about his mistakes. He can prevent other doctors from making the same mistake, or similar mistakes to the one he made.