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1 3 M A R C H 2 0 1 5 | O U T P AT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E ting and driving, no explanation can drown out the fact that the state medical board ruled that Dr. Friedberg was talking on his cell phone instead of monitoring his patient. He has been placed on probation for 3 years, a punishment he calls "tepid." While on probation, Dr. Friedberg is barred from supervising physician assistants and his work must be monitored by another anesthesiologist. He's also required to take ethics and extra CE courses. But for Dr. Friedberg, 66, who has devoted much of his 37-year career to safe anesthesia and making sure patients don't "hear, feel or remember their surgery," this incident stings. "They tried to portray me as failing to pay attention to the patient," he says. "I had a death on my watch, and I still feel badly." Dr. Friedberg isn't convinced, however, that this is a case of distract- ed doctoring. "It's not below the standard of care to take a cell phone call during surgery," he says. "I was listening to the tone of the pulse oximeter with my other ear. That tone is like gold. If you hear that beep-beep- beep ..." Dr. Friedberg says an old ("but still true") definition of anesthesia is 99% boredom, 1% sheer terror. "Distraction may be a form of coping with boredom," he says. "What some call distraction, others might call multi-tasking. Chasing EMG spikes back down to baseline is a novel vir- tual video game for the anesthesia professional that also fights bore- dom." Why not steal a page from the It Can Wait texting and driving cam- paign? The text, the phone call, Facebook: They can wait until after surgery. "Nothing angers me more than seeing a staff member with his feet propped up in a clinical location, texting on his cell phone," says Mary Ann Kelly, RN, administrator of the Madison (Ala.) Surgery Center. E D I T O R ' S P A G E