News in brief - May 2, 2011

Michigan becomes 36th "I'm sorry" state

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in April signed into law a measure that will allow physicians to express sympathy to patients and their families after adverse events without having such statements used in medical liability suits against them.

As with similar "I'm sorry" laws in 35 other states, actual admissions of fault or negligence are not protected from admissibility in court. The Michigan State Medical Society supports the law, which took effect immediately.

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Drinking night before impairs surgeon's skills the next day

Surgeons who become intoxicated the evening before surgery are prone to errors in the operating room, says a study in the April issue of Archives of Surgery.

In related experiments, researchers evaluated the performance of laparoscopic students and experts after a night of drinking. Sixteen students at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were randomly selected to either drink or abstain from alcohol, and eight experts at Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut were instructed to drink.

All participants trained on the Minimally Invasive Surgical Trainer Virtual Reality. Those in the drinking groups ate dinner and consumed alcohol until intoxicated, said the study (archsurg.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/146/4/419/).

Subjects were evaluated the next day at 9 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. on how long it took them to conduct the MIST-VR, how well they used diathermy and whether they made errors. Surgeons in the alcohol groups showed deterioration on all performance measures, even as late as 4 p.m.

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