Rude, unprofessional surgeons not only impact their colleagues but can also affect their patients’ recovery, US researchers have found. 

Patients of surgeons with numerous reports of unprofessional behaviour from co-workers are more likely to experience complications, including wound infections, pneumonia, blood clots, renal failure, stroke and MI. 

“We were interested in understanding whether surgeons’ unprofessional behaviours might undermine culture, threaten teamwork and potentially increase the risk for adverse outcomes of care,” says study author Dr William Cooper, of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. 

The complication rate for patients whose surgeons have no complaints is 10.7%, for those with 1-3 complaints it is 12.6%, while the rate is 14.1% for surgeons with more than four complaints, the JAMA Surgery study finds.