I've done this before (after checking state law of course). I only made a recording because of simple curiosity. When I listened to it afterward, I discovered

I've done this before (after checking state law of course). I only made a recording because of simple curiosity. When I listened to it afterward, I discovered that nothing was said during the procedure other than that which related to the work being performed. (What was hilarious though were my attempts to speak after waking up.) Sometimes it's not possible to do this in an elaborate surgery where you have to remove all of your clothing. I couldn't care less about the surgeon's personality (bedside manner) or what he/she thinks about me personally as long as he performs his job well. I think a much bigger problem in the medical field is the lack of performance review. I remember reading one study that provided video recordings of gastric bypass surgery to a panel of experts (professors, top-rated surgeons, etc.). The experts did not know who performed the surgeries, but they gave each surgery video a "quality" score. After a year, the outcome of each patient was compared to the quality score, and strong correlations were noted. Yet despite rankings of universities, professors, cars, computers, books, and anything else one could possibly rank, you won't find rankings of how good surgeons or anesthesiologists are at their job. Oh sure, you'll get some subjective metric of how people feel about the doctor (sites like HealthGrades), but it's been shown this really corresponds to how personable the doctor is.