The arguments for the installation of surveillance cameras in surgery rooms cannot be marked as "invalid" nor as "unprecedented". There have been numerous cases of patient abuse, unlicensed surgeries, data leaks, and controversies regarding faults of the operating surgeon disguised and hidden, all of which cannot be argued with. However, taking into account the nature of the surgeons' vocation that forces them to make pressing life-and-death decisions, we should explore what could perhaps be the biggest negative of monitored surgeries — over-defining the boundaries of surgery.

For almost anyone studying history "from a bird's eye view", the only events that truly stand out are achievements and crimes that are out of the ordinary. Entrepreneurs, too, are mostly praised for their ability to revolutionize, innovate beyond expectation, and think outside the box in order to bring profit to the stakeholders and provide unsubstitutable value to consumers. Similarly, the responsibility of doctors is to seek solutions and take rational steps to ensure the betterment of the patient, as stated by the Hippocratic Oath.

The difference between an ambitious founder getting funded and a doctor being selected to perform a surgery, however, lies in timing. If we assume a perfect scenario of the founder and the doctor being completely selfless and seeking utmost benefit for the consumer and the patient respectively, this becomes evident. Unlike entrepreneurs, who can afford to make mistakes and survive unfavorable outcomes, any mistake a surgeon makes could cost the life of their patient. Furthermore, investors have the time to analyze, forecast, and precalculate a certain founder’s probability of success based on the strength of their pitch. Doctors, on the contrary, are normally required to perform complex surgeries in one attempt within a few hours. Not only do they have to make relatively instantaneous decisions, but they also need to account for individual physiological differences and conditions for every patient. It's almost as if doctors found startups four times a day.

When a startup encounters an unprecedented challenge, rarely do the founders go back to their microeconomics textbook, but instead call for an equally unprecedented and bold solution in an attempt to overcome it. Doctors may not have textbooks in the surgery room, but hospitals, more so commercial ones, pay doctors and expect their obedience to the hospital codes. The mere existence of surveillance cameras in surgery rooms would put pressure on surgeons.  This pressure might be productive, requiring them to act "by the book", but the fear of losing their jobs and being too conscious of what they look like on surveillance cameras may influence their performance. It would be understandable if surgeries were repetitive and required no unique approaches with each patient, but that is not the case — extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary actions.

Of course, the solutions, being bold, are not completely irrational and are somewhat logical, just out of the ordinary and not outlined anywhere else. This brings us back to the history example — notable achievements by notable figures are rarely completely unreasonable; high-stake circumstances almost force individuals to make split-second decisions when they know they can't live with the possibility of the opposite. Accountability systems for these kinds of circumstances also may vary - in the military, disobedience of any sort with any purpose and result leads to discharge. Such a system leads to corruption from the top down. The bottom line, however, is not to keep surgery rooms unmonitored, but to truly think through the future of the two options and define what would be more important. A more thorough examination is necessary to solve the problem at hand in the most optimal way possible, the act of passing a requirement that gives the freedom to interpret however one pleases may seem more like a gesture of attempting to resolve the issue without actually solving it. Monitoring may be the end of the problem it was meant to solve, but it will bring about other issues too, and that is the bottom line.