Basically the most dangerous type of people across any situation.
The amazing things is that most surgeons are like this -- the traits described are a near archetype for surgeons -- and yet outcomes for surgery are pretty damn good, and rapidly getting better for many types of surgery.
I would say that "good" is relative to what can be reasonably expected. If most surgeons fit that description, then we may not have an independent way to establish our expectations. That is, maybe we think it's "good" because we don't know better.
Hospital error is a leading cause of death in the U.S., though I don't know how much of that is due to surgery.
[1] http://www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/ss_checklist/en...
This training was all kicked off by a British Airways captain whose wife died on the operating table due to the surgeons ignoring the less senior people in the operating theatre when they raised the alarm and offered solutions. More power to him.
Also, pilots must sustain a good enough performance for hours, while surgeons must sustain a great performance for minutes. Those are very different requirements, and may quite well fit different personalities.
We did software for Hospitals here in Europe. They told us that confidence is one of the most important things for surgeons but arrogance is very bad. We had lots of data on our hands.
Also, while surgeons are well considered here in Europe, they are not the "Ferrari at the door" US types.
One of the big problems is that people can see the errors on others, but not in oneself. So our job was basically organizing things automatically to minimize errors, using lots of psychology, like making sure other professionals could see the errors of the first, recording things and so on.
We told them that it was for University kids to learn. While true, the main idea is controlling the surgeon by other surgeons. It works flawlessly.
"infallibility" could be good for making people confident and no doubt. At the same time is very bad if applied with authority if the surgeon is bad.
I can't say that I agree, and a lot of people whose surgery didn't turn our well aren't around to complain.
Our instincts and the lessons we learned in childhood are often wrong, especially in environments very different from our childhood, historical, and evolutionary environments, like aviation.