The lede:

In March, a patient at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park underwent surgery to remove a cancerous kidney. But the next day, a hospital pathologist reported no evidence of cancer in the kidney that was removed.

The surgical site had been marked, and the surgeon and operating room team did the
recommended “time out” briefing to confirm the plan before surgery. The problem: Weeks before the surgery, the side of the patient’s body with the diseased kidney was wrongly identified in the patient’s medical chart.

Officials at Park Nicollet told the patient and family about the error and apologized for it. Days later, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a story headlined, “Wrong kidney removed from Methodist Hospital cancer patient.” But the scoop was not planted by an aggressive trial lawyer or dug up by a resourceful investigative reporter. Rather, officials at Park Nicollet decided to go public with the mistake.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

Chicago — It’s a relatively simple case, Dr. Murphy told the ethics consultants he met with in June. A Spanish-speaking, 65-year-old woman of Mexican descent presented with a large growth in the soft tissue of her lower torso. He suspected it might be cancer and wanted to order a biopsy, but was worried the woman’s daughter — who handled interpreting duties — would try to shelter her mother from the bad news.

“It’s crazy,” Dr. Murphy said. The patient “needs to be involved in her own health care decisions at some level.”

When the daughter, Ines, stepped in to meet with the same ethics consultants, Michael Bliss and Jeffrey Loebl, tension filled the room.

“I know how she is,” Ines said of her mother. “When my dad was really ill — he had cancer — she used to say to me all the time, ‘You shouldn’t tell someone they have cancer.’ She’s right. Knowing that information doesn’t help you get better.”

The case represented a clash of cultures. On one side was Dr. Murphy’s medical culture of patient autonomy; on the other was the patient’s cultural preference to be left in the dark. Slapped on top was a healthy dose of strained relations that left the ethics consultants flummoxed on how to satisfy everyone.

Perhaps it’s a good thing the scenario was just pretend.

The whole shebang.