ProcedureEvery proceduralist keeps some record of complications — for the department, for the registry, for the lawyers. Almost none of those records make anyone better. They are written for accountability, not for learning.
A personal complication log serves a different master: you. And that changes what belongs in it.
Grade it, every time
Use a standard grading system — CIRSE classification for interventional radiology, Clavien-Dindo for surgery — and grade every complication, including the trivial ones. Two reasons:
- Grading forces precision. "Small groin hematoma, resolved without treatment, grade 1" teaches more than "minor bleeding".
- Trends only appear when the denominator is honest. If you only log the disasters, you will never see that your grade 1–2 rate has been creeping up.
Write the reflection while it stings
The most valuable sentence in any complication entry is the one written within hours of the event: what you were thinking at the decision point. Memory rewrites itself quickly and always in our favor. A log entry written the same day preserves the honest version — the hesitation about the catheter choice, the pressure to finish before the next case.
Review quarterly, not case by case
Individual complications are noise; patterns are signal. Every few months, read your last quarter in one sitting and ask:
- Is any complication type recurring?
- Do complications cluster around a material, an approach, a time of day?
- Which of my own reflections keep repeating — and have I acted on them?
This is the step where an assistant that can summarize your own logbook earns its keep: not by judging your practice, but by surfacing the repetitions you have stopped noticing.
ProcedureTracker is a free case log for medical proceduralists — complications, grading, reflections, materials and literature, forever free. The AI assistant that summarizes your patterns comes with a 7-day free trial.