by: Gretchen Schwarze, @GretchenSchwa10 My husband, also a surgeon, was recently discussing donor-nephrectomy with a healthy 65 year-old woman in his transplant clinic. He told her the 30-day survival for this operation was excellent. She was shocked he would quote such metrics, “I don’t want to live for just 30 days!” Yet for years, we in surgery have judged our successes by the number of patients who don’t die within 30 days of surgery. I know it is easy to find examples of surgeons behaving badly over a postoperative patient whose death seems to threaten his “numbers,” but as a surgeon who has been there I can tell you that it is viscerally painful to watch a patient you operated on succumb to postoperative complications. Deep notions of error and responsibility are ingrained in our culture and are reinforced in many ways including M&M conferences and NSQIP (National Safety Quality Improvement Program) reports. While I’m all for improving safety and quality, I s