Painfully honest: A brain surgeon looks back on his mistakes
Henry Marsh is a pioneering brain surgeon known for radical honesty. Now living with cancer, he reflects on the risks of his profession – both to his patients and to himself.
Henry Marsh is a pioneering British brain surgeon living with cancer. Now semi-retired, throughout his career he was known for his radical honesty, including once giving a lecture entitled All My Worst Mistakes, and inviting patients to sue him for operations that went wrong. In the face of his own diagnosis, he began to be haunted by the ‘ghosts’ of patients he had not been able to save: “I don’t remember my successes at all. All I remember are the failures.”
First broadcast in 2022.
Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Laura Thomas
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com
(Photo: Henry Marsh. Credit: Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images)
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