The plenary session of the annual American College of Surgeons meeting was brought to a standstill last Saturday when the keynote speaker, Dr. Davinci, said that he had determined “to a high degree of likelihood” that Anesthesiologists are not all legally named “Anesthesia”.
Several surgeons in the audience initially burst out laughing, sure that it was a joke. Dr. Cappodorno was overheard gaffawing and then turning to his neighbor, Dr. Poorlow, and saying “Ha! That’s a good one. Can you imagine how confusing that would be?!”
Soon, however, it became clear that Davinci was not joking. He offered, as evidence, a birth certificate of an anesthesiologist he knew. On his powerpoint slide he blew up the section titled “given name” and the audience gasped to see “Robert” listed where they all expected to see “Anesthesia”.
After the conference, this reporter spoke with several surgeons who appeared to still be in shock. Dr. Owens, veteran hepatobiliary surgeon, looked dazed. “All this time I thought they went into anesthesia because they were named Anesthesia. Now I can’t figure out why they chose that specialty.”
Dr. Shuck, prominent vascular surgeon, looking as if he’d seen a ghost, said, “I don’t know when they decided to make this change, but I’m writing to the Joint Commission immediately to ask them to change it back. Patient safety will suffer if I have to dedicate brain power to remembering individual names!”
Dr. Embray, pioneer of robotically controlled robotic surgery, was skeptical, saying, with a chuckle, “I don’t buy it. I think Davinci is trying to pull one over on us. Next thing you know he’ll say the Xray techs aren’t actually named “Fluoro!”
