Abstract

CAMPOS, Alberto. Narratives of surgical normativity. Reality or fiction?. Cir. gen [online]. 2020, vol.42, n.1, pp.69-83.  Epub Sep 24, 2021. ISSN 1405-0099.  https://doi.org/10.35366/92715.

The application of normativity in medicine is problematic due to ambiguities of legal language that surgeons do not understand. The interpretation of rules governing health systems and services generates conflicts between physicians and lawyers, particularly when iatrogenesis occurs. In this essay norms are posed as useful fictions, and normativity as a narrative. Its different technical, psychological, operational and control problems, some factual aspects, and the anomalous adaptive behaviors that surgeons adopt in order to move within the scope of a normativity they do not always understand, are analyzed. Several Official Mexican Standards and the Surgical Safety Checklist of the World Health Organization are also analyzed. Finally, the surgeons' conflict between strictly adhering to rules or to their good free will, between the legal and the ethical, and the critical questions they must ask to practice in a complex legal environment in which they no longer have the freedom of an earlier time, are discussed.

Keywords : Medical narratives; surgical normativity; philosophy of medicine; surgical safety checklist; iatrogenesis.

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