Who Should We Blame for Medical Complications?

I wanted to make a video about something that I've been thinking about, a lot this week. And I have to warn you upfront, this is inspired by a deeply tragic and upsetting case of a young child who died, and it was reported in the news this week.

I know I'm barely posting videos these days, and I always hope my return will be something, frankly, light hearted and prepared.

But on a few occasions now, something topical has happened that made me want to talk to you. And so this is another sort of ad hoc video, and it's quite a somber one, but I'll try and keep it focused.

And I don't want to concentrate too much on specific details about one case, because we can never know all the information, even having read what is available publicly.

And I would never want to speculate, particularly with such a sad case, but this is more to highlight a few themes.

Obviously I'll briefly explain the case, which I saw reported in the BBC with the subheading Trainee doctor punctures artery during routine procedure and in fact, I thought this was the headline, so it may have subsequently changed.

Certainly the mirror and other outlets, I may be thinking of them. They reported with the headline focusing on the trainee doctor.

It's about 3 year old Aarav Chopra, who was born with something called biliary atresia. It's a rare and life threatening disease where bile, can't drain from the liver to the gallbladder and it can cause cirrhosis, it can cause liver failure.

And this poor little boy had undergone a liver transplant, which, unfortunately, his body had rejected and had all kinds of things happening, including clots in major vessels.

And he underwent three procedures in a single day, one of which was a liver biopsy. And this caused a major bleed that led to his death.

I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child, especially at such a young age, after he'd gone through so much medical trauma.

In his short life. I found it extremely sad, so I wanted to understand what happened. Now, from the news coverage, it was clear that the implication is that a trainee doctor, which I don't feel is a very clear term, which I'll come back to, has made a mistake.