noun
General Slang
Cowboy
· noun · medical
A surgeon who operates aggressively and off the guidelines.
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Definitions
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A surgeon who deviates from protocol, swaggers past the multidisciplinary plan, and reaches for the scalpel where a watch-and-wait would do. Said with grudging respect or open contempt depending on who's talking — the patient sometimes benefits, the system pays for it.
“Don't refer her to him — he's a total cowboy, he'll have her in theatre by Friday whether she needs it or not.”
by community
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Cowboy In A Sentence
Don't refer her to him — he's a total cowboy, he'll have her in theatre by Friday whether she needs it or not.
Origin & Usage
Popularised by surgeon-writer Atul Gawande in the New Yorker. A 2015 Harvard study made it stick — naming 'cowboy doctors' as a real cost driver for US healthcare.
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