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Doctor regrets having agreed to request Tom Sharp - Associated Press Friday, December 8, 2000 Nashville --- Surgeon Michael R. Petracek faced an ethical dilemma: grant a white patient's request to keep black men out of the operating room during open-heart surgery, or risk her refusing the potentially life-saving procedure. Petracek wanted to make sure his patient got the care she needed, so he agreed with the request. He asked a black male technician to leave the operating room during the Oct. 9 surgery, a move he now calls "a bad mistake." Word slowly spread throughout the Catholic hospital about the incident and complaints by employees finally made their way to the hospital's executive committee, which took no disciplinary action. Petracek (pronounced peh-TRAY-sick) is a highly regarded surgeon best known for having developed a way to conserve blood during heart operations so Jehovah's Witnesses, who oppose blood transfusions on religious grounds, could still have surgery. He briefly spoke to two Nashville newspapers this week about his decision. Petracek told the hospital, however, that the woman's husband did not want black men looking at his wife's nude body, hospital spokesman John Mays said Thursday. He noted that a black woman was on the surgical team without any objection. "The husband was very overbearing and told the doctor he was pretty much their last hope," Mays said. "Basically, he was saying if Dr. Petracek did not do it they were just not going to seek any other care." The woman and her husband, who have not been identified, first went to Dr. John Austin at Baptist Hospital and made the same request of him in August. He denied it and asked them to reconsider. "She really did need an operation for something that was ultimately life-threatening, so I didn't want to send her away after one conversation," Austin said. "I saw her about a week later and they were still just as adamant, so I told them I could not alter our personnel according to their racial bias." Petracek took the opposing view. "I was trying to find a way to get the woman the medical care she needed," he told The Tennessean newspaper. He told the couple he would do his best to honor their request. As fate would have it, on the day of the operation a black male perfusionist was assigned to operate the heart-lung machine. Petracek quietly asked him to leave and replaced him with a white technician. "I'm solely responsible for what happened," Petracek said. "It was not done maliciously. It was done in ignorance." The perfusionist, who was not named by hospital officials, declined to be interviewed. "As far as I'm concerned, it's done. It's in the past. Dr. Petracek apologized to me," Mays quoted him as saying. The decision was reviewed by the physician performance and medical executive committees of St. Thomas. No disciplinary action was taken, although hospital executives made it clear they did not agree with Petracek's decision and they encouraged him to apologize publicly. "An internal review concluded that threatening statements from the patient's family put undue pressure on Dr. Petracek. This was an internal matter, and all parties involved are satisfied that it has been resolved," hospital officials said in a statement. The hospital said the threat was the woman's refusal to have surgery under any other circumstances. Vanderbilt University medical ethicist Stuart Finder said Petracek was put in a difficult position. Finder said Petracek should have sought the advice of his colleagues or the hospital's ethicist before asking the black employee to leave. "It's about finding the balance between the obligation to the patient, regardless of their background or creed, and the obligation to the community," said Finder, who helps direct a weekly ethics discussion group for Vanderbilt medical students. "I think the reports from other doctors are accurate, that Mike Petracek is not a prejudicial guy. So something moved him. None of us will ever know what it was, and that is the crux of the moral issue." Finder said that once Petracek agreed he would try not to have any black people in the operating room, he was in a no-win situation. "If he asks the person to leave, he is continuing a racist view that he himself does not agree with. If he doesn't, he is confronted with the question of what his word means," Finder said. "There may be those who say he did the wrong thing. I think
that's an oversimplification because moral life is much more
complicated than that."
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