The earthquake dislocated my hip replacement

When I was training, one of my distinguished bosses, an academic, used to tell me about one of his trainers back in the 70's who used to listen to the occasional patient in the clinic who'd not had a good outcome. He'd acknowledge their unhappiness, and indeed, empathise very effectively. When the frustrated patient eventually left the consulting room, he'd turn and face his registrar (my boss) and say sadly:  "funny fellow that".

The moral of the story - as it was emphasised to me - was never blame the patient.

Own your own mistakes and bad results. Be brave, dig deep. Good advice, I suppose.

Later, as my boss approached retirement, he'd show me an X ray - often of a knee replacement who'd got some residual pain - and say something like "I can't see much wrong with it. He's a strange fellow though. You never succeed with people like that"

For any one case he may have had a point, but he'd forgotten his own advice. Never blame the patient.

So blame can be an issue. Not in the medicolegal sense, more in terms of peer respect and apportioning embarrassment. Maybe that patient fell because your hip replacement dislocated, rather than your assertion that it dislocated because they fell. We're only human after all.

So in the spirit of making excuses for cock ups, I give you a short video of a  handy set of excuses for the next time you have had a hand in a surgical complication.  One of them will apply, I'm sure.