Collateral Damage: A Patient, a New Procedure and the Learning Curve

Not the Answer

So Pam was given over to the care of a trainee, a trainee using an unfamiliar instrument  to perform an investigational procedure, one which Calkins called “by far the most dangerous procedure ever performed in an electrophysiology lab,”  and he  did not know whether it was safe or effective.

The only thing that Hugh Calkins knew for sure when he began offering it to patients as a possible cure for Afib was that  it was a “technically challenging and high risk” procedure. And he was letting trainees do the job—without informing the patients of that fact…