A 30-year-old man presented to the hospital for a scheduled laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair with mesh placement. The patient had no significant past medical history and did not take any home medications. He was expected to stay a few hours after the surgery and then be released the same day. The surgery went uneventfully, but after surgery, the patient continued to have high levels of pain at the surgical site.
He was then admitted to the hospital for monitoring and pain control. As the team that performed the surgery had already left for the day, a resident physician who was unfamiliar with the patient provided overnight coverage. The night resident was called to the patient's bedside multiple times overnight by the charge nurse to address the patient's pain, and the resident ordered additional intravenous pain medication. When the primary surgical team arrived in the morning, they…
