"As a nurse, we are not allowed to tell a patient if their doctor is terrible. We can’t even recommend getting a second opinion. Working in a particular ICU, we nurses used to refer to one surgeon as ‘The Butcher.’ His botched surgeries were pretty awful. Some of us even complained about it to the higher-ups but were told that he brings money to the hospital, so just keep quiet.

Pay attention if a nurse is trying to be tactful about a doctor (my go-to when asked about that surgeon was saying he was a hard worker). There are surgeons that are amazing and others who I wouldn’t allow to do surgery on a dead cockroach if I had any authority."