Opinion ID: 1168687
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the standard of care in medical malpractice cases

Text: The plaintiff also asserts that the Court of Appeals erred in holding (48 Or. App. at 692-693, 617 P.2d 1377) that the standard of care by which the defendant's performance was to be measured is the degree of skill and care required of an ordinary podiatrist in Eugene or similar communities under similar circumstances. The plaintiff claims that a podiatrist who employs the same surgical standard as an orthopedic surgeon should be held to the same degree of skill and care as the physician in that procedure. Plaintiff relies upon this statement from Dowell v. Mossberg, supra , that:    Before a defendant can be held liable for malpractice the plaintiff must show that the defendant failed to exercise that degree of skill and care which an ordinary practitioner in the same line of practice in the community would have exercised. 226 Or. at 185, 355 P.2d 624. Until now, the settled rule in Oregon has been that medical practitioners are entitled to have their conduct tested by the standard of care of the school or method to which they belong. Expressed otherwise, the standard of care is that of a reasonably prudent, careful and skillful practitioner of that discipline in the community or a similar community under the same or similar circumstances. [6] We confess to some difficulty in finding any logic in the plaintiff's contention. The plaintiff's position appears to be that if practitioners of the two disciplines perform identical procedures, the duty of care is the same, and the jury should be instructed that the defendant's duty of care is that of both disciplines. Even if the duty of care of both disciplines is the same because the procedures are identical, an instruction which holds the defendant to the degree of care of reasonably prudent practitioners within the defendant's discipline necessarily is equivalent to an instruction that the practitioner must meet the standards of both. We discussed a similar contention in Foxton v. Woodmansee, 236 Or. 271, 290, 386 P.2d 659, 388 P.2d 275 (1964), as follows:    Since the defendant is an osteopath and the evidence reveals without contradiction that, so far as this case is concerned, he was governed in his treatment of the plaintiff's injury by the same norms that apply to medical doctors, it was entirely proper for the court to instruct upon the standard of care applicable to osteopaths. It seems to us that the plaintiff's criticism of the instruction is captious. 236 Or. at 290, 386 P.2d 659. It is also appropriate to note that the statutory standard of care applicable to medical doctors under ORS 677.095 is: A physician licensed to practice medicine by the Board of Medical Examiners for the State of Oregon has the duty to use that degree of care, skill and diligence which is used by ordinarily careful physicians in the same or similar circumstance in his or a similar community. Although ORS chapter 682, which concerns podiatrists, has no counterpart to ORS 677.095, we see no reason why podiatrists should not continue to be held to a similar standard, measured by the degree of skill and care required of an ordinarily careful podiatrist in the community or similar communities under similar circumstances.