Robert Elms, a transplant surgeon at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, believes the principle of compensation would be more acceptable to many than payment.

BBC: Why not allow organ trading?

Professor David Sharpe, a consultant plastic surgeon based at Bradford Royal Infirmary, said he had failed to persuade medical insurance companies to pay for breast reduction surgery even in cases where it was obvious that the patient required the operation on medical grounds.

BBC: Surgery

But it's not clear if the performance lapses seen in the study would be meaningful in real-world operating rooms, says surgeon Emily Boyle, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, Ireland.

CNN: Surgeons' 'bottle-to-scalpel' time affects errors