Sexting and Anesthesia

Arthur Zilberstein, M.D.

What's going on with all these stories about distracted anesthesiologists? Seems like some of us just can't seem to put down our smart phones and step away from social media for even a few minutes while we attend to our patients. First we had the Texas anesthesiologist who was fired for neglecting his patients while posting on Facebook, leading to one patient death in an otherwise routine procedure. Now the web has exploded with guffaws over a Seattle anesthesiologist who just lost his medical license for chronic sexting while in the operating room.

Arthur Zilberstein, M.D. had his medical license suspended for posting hundreds of sexts while working in the hospital.  The Washington State Department of Health noted he had sent 250 text messages of a sexual nature between April and August of 2013. During one gastric operation, he posted 45 messages with "sexual innuendo" over an hour and a half.

Texting like a teenage girl while at work is bad enough, but he was also found to have sexted pictures of his genitalia to his PATIENTS. Yikes. Other damning accusations include looking through hospital medical records for patient pictures to satisfy some sexual urge. To top it off, he had written 29 prescriptions for narcotics outside his medical practice without proper documentation.

Dude, you seriously need to get some help. It maybe cute to sext people in high school and college, but man, it is time to grow up. A 47 year old man should have enough common sense and decency to know how wrong all this is. To all the anesthesiologists out there--please put that cell phone and iPad down while working. Don't think nobody will notice because EVERYBODY does. One minor anesthesia complication and everybody in the OR will accuse you of ignoring your patients while you were busy surfing the net. It just isn't worth it.