Hidden head injury hazards expose cracks in OR safety culture

One of the most sobering moments in the career of anesthesiologist Cornelius Sullivan, MD, occurred not as a caretaker in the OR, but as a patient in the emergency department. Having been knocked out cold by a low-hanging monitor during a surgical procedure at Boston Children’s Hospital, he had to answer questions from a neurologist to assess his mental state. “I thought I was pulling them off pretty well,” he recalls—until the physician turned to his wife. “He asked, ‘Is this your husband?’ and she said, ‘Not even close.’ I wasn’t making sense to her. And for weeks, if not months, I really did have some trouble with some word finding and name recall. That’s scary…I need my brain to make a living.”