Terrifying and hard-to-read but important story about a problem that's strangely hard to confront: what happens -- and what SHOULD happen -- when medical professionals make fatal mistakes? Is it realistic to expect that in careers that can be decades long, any human being will be able to avoid all irreversible error?

I was brought up thinking the primary rule is first do no harm.

But you're right that there's so many questions embedded in that statement. 

I am a retired RN, and this has always been an issue.  Humans will make mistakes, period.  The medical field has double, and triple checks, but mistakes still slip through, mistakes can be reduced, but never completely eliminated.  Maybe when humans no longer are the deliverers of care mistakes will become almost non-existent.

Speaking from personal experience, it is very traumatizing, it all comes back, even 20+ years after, and no one died, or faced any consequences from it, but it was earth shattering for me, I thought I should go flip burgers, so my job wouldn't carry the risk of hurting anyone.

Janill I can't imagine how awful you felt, trying to help people but coping with mistakes. 

No wonder so many people in that profession feel anxiety.