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 If the bill is approved by parliament, South Korea will be the first
developed country to require closed-circuit cameras to record
surgical procedures.
The push for having cameras in operating theatres intensified after
a case in 2016 in which surgeons at private clinics were accused of
assigning nurses or underqualified doctors to perform procedures,
sometimes with fatal results.
Kwon Dae-hee, then a university junior, died of haemorrhage in
October 2016 after 49 days in coma as a result of a jawline surgery
in Seoul, which he did not tell his family about ahead of time, his
mother Lee Na-geum, 61, told Reuters.
Lee, who has been holding a one-person protest in front of the
parliament since January 11, 2018, said her son was traumatised by
bullying in high school for his prominent chin, and he was
determined to undergo the 6.5 million won ($5,583) cosmetic surgery.
Lee said she felt lucky to have obtained the CCTV footage of her
son's surgery as there were hundreds of parents who would never know
if their children's death on the operating table was the result of
malpractice.
She also said she had reviewed the seven-and-a-half hour long
footage of Kwon's surgery over a thousand times and was able to
prove that it was performed in part by an unqualified nursing
assistant and an intern doctor, not by the chief plastic surgeon as
promised as he was dealing with two other surgeries at the same
time.
This led to Kwon losing over 3.5 litres of blood and he died of
excessive bleeding.
With the video evidence she collected, Lee sued the hospital and the
head surgeon, who was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter
and sentenced to three years in prison.
"It is a medical crime when someone else - 'a ghost' - performs the
surgery and not the surgeon hired without patient's consent," Lee
said.
"There are so many unfortunate bereaved families who cannot reveal
the truth because they don't have physical evidence when a healthy
person dies in an operating room."
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 Multiple attempts had been made
to amend the Medical Services Act to require
surveillance cameras, primarily to catch stop
doctors from delegating surgeries to unlicensed
personnel, an act which is subject to a maximum
of five years in prison or 50 million won
($42,952) fine.
Up to now, such attempts had died due to
lobbying by doctors, said Lee who began an
advocacy group for medical justice and patients'
rights. The bill was met with
objections from doctors, hospitals and medical groups, including the
140,000-member Korean Medical Association (KMA), which claims
video-monitoring will undermine trust in doctors, violate patient
privacy and discourage doctors from taking risks to save lives.
"We think trust is key in doctor-patient relationship... the bill
undermines doctors to actively recommend treatment methods and
treating patients," KMA spokeswoman Park Soo-hyun told Reuters.
"Residents have already expressed their intent not to apply to
surgery or surgical departments if the CCTVs are installed in
operating rooms, which will lead to a collapse of an essential part
of South Korea's medical care."
The bill appears to have overwhelming public support: In a poll by
the Anti‑Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, an independent
government agency, in June, the bill had the support of 97.9% of the
13,959 respondents.
($1 = 1,164.0800 won)
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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