• The Final Interview: The Daily Archive

Madrid, 1939. Surgeon.

Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research in 1999. His first novel, 'The Surgeon' has just hit bookstores with the La Esfera de los Libros seal.

I heard a colleague of his say that literature helps the doctor because reading seems to diagnose ... But he suspected that the doctor has time to read novels.

I believe that science cannot be novelized.

What can be novel is what happens in the operating room, what doctors suffer, how long the operations last, the relationships that occur. Are jokes made in the operating room? It is rare.

But sometimes it happens that, in a moment of nerves, when the environment is too charged and the tension goes against the work we do ... At that moment, a joke can work, lower the nerves. , speaks of surgeons' frustration with things that go wrong. The real frustration is not being able to heal.

Not being able to treat, that is painful, treating a patient and knowing that there is not much cure for him.

The good thing is that it is a matter of time, that science advances even with diseases that seemed impossible, but that is not the frustration of the novel: it is the frustration of misunderstanding and that of the characters who doubt themselves. you have to get used to everything.

They get used to the viscera, because no one comes here who "has a stomach", as they always say.

And he gets used to misunderstanding.

It is not that you become insensitive but that you understand that your balance is very important to help others.

The surgeon also suffers and has a hard time.

But if you go to an autopsy and find that you did what you had to do, you don't need any more quality control. A psychiatrist friend said that, in his trade, a patient is likely to commit suicide sooner or later.

That it is a drink that has to be passed although not everyone can.

For a surgeon there is also no table that guarantees that a patient will respond well to an operation, no matter how perfect it is.

But you have to continue.

The surgeon was not born to be an ecce homo.

You are not there to argue with the patient's relatives, but you have to understand them.

You have to love the sick and respect the family member, accept him.

It is normal for a person who comes to the hospital with the illusion of curing his father to look for culprits if he is not saved.

He will blame even the doorman, that is, much more the surgeon.

You have to understand it but you also have to put some distance because, if not, one ends up thinking: next time, I will not get into trouble and I will do the minimum to save my responsibility. There is a character in the novel, Juan Antonio, who comes to tell that no matter how much knowledge and good hand someone may have, you cannot be a good surgeon without personal maturity and serenity. You can be a wonderful surgeon assistant, but there will come a point where you cannot assume more responsibility, you cannot take the rudder.

Because for that you need leadership skills by example.

The chief surgeon has to endure the longest, he has to be the most disciplined, the one who takes the best interest in each person in the team, the one who studies the most. Tell me about those eight-hour operations.

How do they support each other? It's a matter of training, like the trapeze artist.

It seems impossible but it is done.

Once, after a 17-hour operation, a rumor came out that Dr. Moreno was given a probe when entering the operating room to make him endure.

The last question

Tell me about the pandemic, what happened this year.

No one was prepared for this.

But those of us who have been away for a while realize that the management in other countries was very different.

They put highly qualified people in the front row.

Instead, here we are to cakes as in Goya's drawing.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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