CCTV cameras could be installed in South Korea operating rooms after surgery mistakes

Hospitals in South Korea could be required to place surveillance cameras in operating rooms after a series of medical accidents involving unqualified staff who stood in for surgeons.

If a parliament vote on the issue approves the move, it would see South Korea become the first developed country to require closed-circuit cameras to record surgical procedures.

Medical groups and hospitals have claimed the bill “undermines doctors” and would lead to a “collapse” of health care.

But pressure for change has grown after a case in 2016 in which surgeons at private clinics were accused of assigning nurses or unqualified doctors to perform procedures, sometimes with fatal results.

Kwon Dae-hee, then a university junior, died of a haemorrhage in October 2016 after 49 days in a coma as a result of a jawline surgery in Seoul, which he did not tell his family about ahead of the time, his mother Lee Na-geum said.

The 61-year-old has been holding a one-person protest in front of parliament since January 2018.

She said her son was traumatised by bullying in high school for his prominent chin and he was determined to undergo the cosmetic surgery.

She had reviewed the footage of more than seven hours of Kwon’s surgery over a thousand times and said she was able to prove that it was performed in part by an unqualified nursing assistant and an intern doctor, not by the chief plastic surgeon as promised.

This led to her son losing over 3.5 litres of blood and he died of excessive bleeding.

With the video evidence she collected, Ms Na-geum sued the hospital and the head surgeon, who was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to three years in prison.

“It is a medical crime when someone else – ‘a ghost’ – performs the surgery and not the surgeon hired without patient’s consent,” Ms Na-geum said.

“There are so many unfortunate bereaved families who cannot reveal the truth because they don’t have physical evidence when a healthy person dies in an operating room.”

Multiple attempts had been made to amend the Medical Services Act to require surveillance cameras, primarily to stop doctors from delegating surgeries to unlicensed personnel, an act which is subject to a maximum of five years in prison or a large fine.

The bill has been met with objections from doctors, hospitals and medical groups, including the 140,000-member Korean Medical Association (KMA), which claims video-monitoring will undermine trust in doctors, violate patient privacy and discourage doctors from taking risks to save lives.

“We think trust is key in doctor-patient relationship… the bill undermines doctors to actively recommend treatment methods and treating patients,” KMA spokeswoman Park Soo-hyun said.

“Residents have already expressed their intent not to apply to surgery or surgical departments if the CCTVs are installed in operating rooms, which will lead to a collapse of an essential part of South Korea’s medical care.”

A poll of public opinion carried out in June by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, an independent government agency, showed the bill had the support of 97.9% of the 13,959 respondents.

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