What is CCTV? CCTV stands for closed-circuit television Literally, CCTV is only available to certain people for certain purposes. It is usually installed on the streets and on the properties of private businesses for the purpose of preventing criminals and traffic accidents. There are dozens of CCTV cameras that can be found on the streets, but there are no CCTV cameras in the operating room. Because the operating room is a place with very personal information, there is a significant risk of being recorded through CCTV. However, as the overall credibility of the medical community has declined due to recent ghost surgery or sexual harassment scandals during surgery, people are calling for the installation of CCTV in operating rooms. Despite these incidents, CCTV cameras should not be installed in operating rooms.

First, CCTV in operating rooms is likely to seriously violate patients' privacy. Currently, many people using medical services claim the need to install CCTV cameras in operating rooms, citing ghost surgery or patient sexual harassment. However, it seems that people are not thinking about whether the installation of CCTVs in operating rooms will ultimately be of benefit to them. An operating room may be simply a place to receive medical services, but it is also a very private place where physical defects of a patient are revealed. If CCTV cameras are installed in this space, this extremely personal information is shared not only between health service users and providers, but also to third parties. Because CCTV creates a lasting record, if the video is spread over the Internet, it will leave an indelible scar for the users of medical services.

Second, setting up CCTV in operating rooms generalizes a small number of immoral doctors. Supporters of installing CCTV cameras in the operating room argue that it is to prevent doctors from committing crimes such as ghost surgery or sexual harassment during surgery. However, there are very few doctors in South Korea who commit such crimes. On the contrary, most doctors work and study day and night to do their best for other people's treatment and provide better medical services. If even their efforts were denied by dishonest and immoral doctors, it would be the fault of users of medical services. No one is exactly the same, and as generalization can have a great impact on society, we should always be careful when generalizing things and seriously think about whether the conditions of the subject are perfectly consistent. But today's medical service users are making the mistake of generalizing a good majority of doctors into an immoral class just because their jobs are the same.

Third, the installation of CCTV cameras in operating rooms is not the fundamental solution to problems such as ghost surgery or doctor sexual harassment so far. The underlying problem of these events is a few doctors' mistaken ethics. If a doctor made moral judgments and operated on patients based on his or her conscience, events like now would not have happened. However, the current medical licensing system determines whether an individual can become a doctor with just knowledge, not ethics or a calling for the job. The presence of CCTV cameras cannot be a measure of whether such incidents occur, as long as a few doctors such as these immoral doctors exist. Rather, the existence of CCTV cameras in the operating room will not solve the problem, but deepen it if a few unethical doctors start abusing CCTV footage. Therefore, it is necessary to foster doctors' ethical awareness as a fundamental solution to the problem and in the long run, making sure that only those with ethical consciousness can become doctors. It would be helpful to resolve the problem if disciplinary actions or independent medical licensing management organizations are established already, as they are in advanced countries such as Canada, to strongly punish unethical doctors and to continue ethical education.

The installation of CCTVs in operating rooms seems to be an effective solution to the problem of ghost surgery and sexual harassment during surgery. But if you look deeper into it, CCTV cameras in the operating room can seriously violate patients' privacy and installing them is a bad solution which generalizes immoral doctors as a whole, and consequently does not work as a fundamental solution. Therefore, we should not address the issue of CCTV in operating rooms, but consider how doctors and patients can develop a healthy culture in which they trust each other.