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WHAT REALLY GOES ON IN OPERATING THEATRES?

Surgeons and their assistants argue, flirt, throw things across the room and poke fun at their patients while they are under the knife, research suggested in July 2018.

The social structure of a surgical team has even been compared to that of a family of monkeys.

A researcher from Emory University, Atlanta, sat in on 200 operations and recorded 6,348 conversations.

She found just over one in every 40 interactions between surgical staff is a fight or argument.

Staff also throw rubbish across the room into bins, dance to music and rub each other's legs flirtatiously.

One reportedly called an unconscious patient 'gigantic' and said they would need 10 people to move her.

Another stormed out of an operating room when an assistant accidentally squirted him in the eye with bodily fluids from an infectious patient.

The study suggests status and 'ego' is a main cause of arguments in the theatre, which are most likely to occur when high-ranking male surgeons try to exert their dominance.

The main surgeons are almost always responsible, being the cause of 118 out of 175 arguments in the investigation.

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