Opinion

When pros become cons

By Scott T. Hards

There are thousands of different jobs in our world. I manage a retail business. If I make a mistake at work, I might delete important data or purchase too much of a product. Usually, the damage can be measured in yen. Doctors, airline pilots and other professionals, however, are different. If they make a similar error — push the wrong button or make a poor judgment call — the damage is frequently measured in human lives.

Last month, Japanese police arrested two surgeons for criminal malpractice in the death of a 12-year-old girl. Their crime was not so much their miscues during the heart surgery that killed the girl, but their falsification of records after the surgery in a cover-up attempt.

Critics and media editorialized that "greater transparency" was needed to prevent such cover-ups. Very true. Unfortunately, however, none of them touched on what I believe is their underlying cause: the fact that professionals in Japan face police investigations and criminal charges for honest mistakes that cause death or injury.

Such accidents in the United States seldom involve the police, except cases where common sense and established rules were flagrantly ignored. Of course there are civil lawsuits, and damages are frequently paid, but the people involved don't end up with potentially career-ending police records. The focus is not on blaming individuals, but rather preventing future occurrences. To do that, the people at the center of the problem must be willing to tell the whole story of what happened, without fear. But if opening their mouths is going to risk the spectacle of police barging into their workplace, or even their arrest, few are going to be forthcoming.

Witness the absurdly overzealous police work that took place after a Boeing 747 and DC-10 nearly collided over Shizuoka in early 2001. Almost immediately after the 747 pilot landed safely, police burst into the aircraft to question him on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in injury (about 100 passengers and crew were hurt by his sudden maneuver to avoid the crash). All this even before the injured had been taken from the aircraft! It's hardly surprising that he refused to discuss the incident.

Highly trained and educated professionals entrusted with others' lives belong to organizations or unions, which can and do serve as watchdogs. Incidents should be reviewed and if there is evidence of criminal negligence, it can be reported to the police. Otherwise, the point of the matter should be to determine what happened, and to take steps to prevent a recurrence, not to finger-point. Medical groups in the United States do this all the time, with doctors suspected of malpractice being grilled by their own peers. And that's also why professional pilots in the United States are immune from criminal prosecution, even if their mistakes kill passengers. Of course, none of this prevents civil lawsuits. It's time for Japan to consider such a system, too.

Certainly, there are bad apples in every barrel, and those who have no business being in the operating room or the cockpit should be weeded out. At the same time, though, we have to remember that we're only human, and people will always make mistakes — even those who have saved many lives with their skills in the past. Should we really be turning professionals into convicts because they were simply too much like the rest of us?

Shukan ST: Aug. 16, 2002

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