When a friend finally arranges the chat we were meant to have some weeks ago, she apologises profusely for the lack of contact. I tell her she doesn’t need to mollify me but it turns out she is the one in need of sympathy. Her husband had gone into hospital for what was termed a routine procedure. While waiting to collect him, my friend suddenly heard the overhead announcement of a code, announcing a patient in extremis.

“Something told me it was him.”

The surgery had unleashed a bacterial shower, rendering him septic on the operating table.

Fortunately, he was in a hospital with an intensive care unit, where he found himself for days receiving life-sustaining treatment. He recovered but I could still feel her palpable fear at the prospect of losing her husband on an ordinary day.

In this case, the procedure was necessary. But just that week, another friend had undergone a gastroscopy to re-examine a gastric ulcer. Afterwards, she reported that the gastroscopy had been fine but the colonoscopy was “pristine”.

“Why did you need a colonoscopy?” I asked.

‘I guess it was routine.’

I didn’t press the point but these two accounts had me reflecting on how doctors and patients think about interventions.

For clinicians, routine simply describes familiarity and frequency. A routine procedure can be safe or low-risk but not no-risk. But patients might hear routine as reassurance that nothing serious can happen. These are two........

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