In a sunny, warm country like Greece, ice hockey is not a popular sport; or to be more accurate... ice hockey is almost a non-existent sport! Thanks to the Winter Olympics, however, a few folks may watch it once every four years before they tune in to channel "football " (soccer for North Americans).
Nonetheless, I felt really proud to randomly find out during research that one of the greatest hockey players of all time is Chris Chelios, a retired American legend of Greek descent, who appeared in the NHL playoffs a record 24 times, and won the prestigious Stanley Cup three times.
The same research taught me another interesting and way more bizarre fact about ice hockey though: How doctors in British Columbia, Canada, are forbidden from talking about their favorite sport during a surgery!
The Menu of the Day
The specific "unspoken rule" became a thing in British Columbia back in 2011, after a patient accused publicly his doctor for discussing a hockey game with nurses during his surgery.
According to Dr. Heidi Oetter, registrar of the province's College of Physicians and Surgeons, the patient was awake during his eye surgery and could hear the surgeon chatting about hockey during the whole time, which caused him unbearable stress as he considered that a serious mistake could happen due to the doctor's uncontrolled chatter.
Soon after the incident, all doctors in British Columbia were "gently reminded" that are not allowed to have hockey or any other irrelevant talk during a patient's surgery. A few "brave" doctors tried to protest against the warning, but without any success.
A pleased with the new regulation Dr. Heidi Oetter told CBC News, "Finally, this was an opportunity to provide guidance to surgeons operating on patients who have not been sedated. The same advice about being discreet would apply in other areas where doctors are chatting with colleagues about non-medical issues that are irrelevant to the important task at hand."
As for the ethical lesson in this story, doc? Your patient should always be safely put under deep anesthesia during a surgery. No pain or stress for him and free hockey chatter for you!
References:
No hockey chat during surgery, B.C. doctors told