Court Opinion

ID: 9883735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:14:47.712895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:29.812258
License: Public Domain

FOLEY, Judge
(concurring specially and dissenting).
I concur in part and dissent in part. Although I agree that this case should be remanded for trial, it is my view that expert testimony is not required to establish whether or not Susan Murray was negligent in leaving Valerie Kanter alone in the bathtub. Rule 702 is erroneously relied upon by the majority as though the rule permits a trial court in the exercise of its discretion to require expert testimony in this case. The rule simply states that a trial court may permit or disallow expert testimony in a given case. Rule 702 should not be applied here.
Generally, negligence actions involving hospitals and hospital staff may be divided into two categories: (1) those where professional judgment has been rendered concerning proper medical care; and (2) those involving nonmedical, administrative, custodial or routine hospital care. This distinction has been recognized by several jurisdictions. Thus, in Kastler v. Iowa Methodist Hospital, 193 N.W.2d 98 (Iowa 1971), the court found:
[I]n the practice of a profession or trade, the standard is “the skill and knowledge normally possessed by members of that profession or trade in good standing in similar communities.” * * * With respect to professional activities of hospitals, we adhere to our rule that the standard is the care “which obtains in hospitals generally under similar circumstances.” * * * [Hjowever, with respect to nonmedical, administrative, ministerial, or routine care, we adopt the rule that the standard is such reasonable care for patients as their known mental and physical condition may require.
Id. at 101-02 (citations omitted). A similar distinction was recognized in Miller v. Trinity Medical Center, 260 N.W.2d 4 (N.D.1977), which cited, inter alia, the Minnesota case of Trepanier v. McKenna, 267 Minn. 145, 125 N.W.2d 603 (1963). Miller, 260 N.W.2d at 6.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has also distinguished between actions which require professional judgment and actions which are merely administrative. In Swigerd v. City of Ortonville, 246 Minn. 339, 75 N.W.2d 217 (1956), the court indicated that although a hospital is not liable under a theory of respondeat superior for the medical judgments of its physicians, it will be liable for a nurse’s negligence in performing “administrative or clerical acts,” even though those acts constitute a part of the patient’s treatment. The court explained:
Routine acts of treatment which an attending physician may reasonably assume will be performed in his absence by nurses of a modern hospital as part of their usual and customary duties, and the execution of which does not require specialized medical knowledge, are merely administrative acts for which negligence in their performance is imputable to the hospital.
Id. at 346-47, 75 N.W.2d at 222.
In Minnesota, the standard of care of a hospital in performing “routine” care is that of “reasonable care for the protection and well-being of the patient commensurate with its actual or constructive knowledge of the patient’s physical and mental condition.” Trepanier, 267 Minn. at 149, 125 N.W.2d at 606, citing, inter alia, Swigerd and Quick v. Benedictine Sisters Hospital Association, 257 Minn. 470, 102 N.W.2d 36 (1960). Although the Minnesota Supreme Court has not expressly indicated that expert testimony is unnecessary to establish the standard of care in these routine care hospital cases, it is important to *919note that the standard in Minnesota is remarkably similar to that in Kastler, where expert testimony was held unnecessary in routine care cases.
The following language from Sylvester v. Northwestern Hospital of Minneapolis, 236 Minn. 384, 386-87, 53 N.W.2d 17, 19 (1952), would also support a conclusion that expert testimony is not required in this type of case:
As to the danger of self-injury or as to the danger reasonably to be anticipated from the acts of another person under the hospital’s control, the reasonable care to be exercised must always be in proportion to the patient’s inability to look after his own safety. The standard of reasonable care is that which would be exercised by a reasonably prudent person under the same or similar circumstances and does not require the taking of precautionary measures to avert a danger which a reasonable person would not anticipate as likely to happen, (emphasis supplied; footnotes omitted)
The Sylvester court specifically refers to a reasonable person standard rather than a reasonable nurse standard. In the context of the present situation, the Swigerd and Sylvester decisions suggest that a jury may determine without the benefit of expert testimony whether Murray’s actions were those of a reasonable and prudent person if those actions were merely routine and did not require specialized medical knowledge.1
The question whether a nurse’s duties should be characterized as professional or routine/ministerial depends upon the nature of the act. Swigerd, 246 Minn. at 344, 75 N.W.2d at 221. A review of cases involving similar fact situations indicates that Murray’s responsibility for bathing Ranter should be characterized as routine, rather than professional.
In Kastler, the Iowa Supreme Court held that expert testimony was unnecessary to establish whether a nurse’s aide was negligent in allowing a psychiatric patient to take a shower unattended when the patient had previously reported that she had not been feeling well. Kastler reasoned that showers were “routine” and “did not lose their character as routine care because they were employed to make the psychiatric patients feel better.” Kastler, 193 N.W.2d at 102.
The Trepanier decision rendered by the Minnesota Supreme Court also involved somewhat similar facts. There, a diabetic patient with a gangrenous foot was assisted by a practical nurse and a nurse’s aide to a portable commode and was told to let them know “when he was done.” The patient attempted to get back to his bed alone and fell. The court in Trepanier applied the “routine care” standard to those facts.
A hospital employee’s actions were also found to be “routine” in Swigerd, where the administration of heat lamp treatment resulted in burns to a patient. In Quick v. Benedictine Sisters Hospital Association, 257 Minn. 470, 102 N.W.2d 36 (1960), a hospital’s supervision of a patient following electric shock treatments was held to be routine. (The patient in Quick fell out of bed, allegedly due to the negligence of hospital personnel.) In Miller, the North Dakota Supreme Court found “routine” a hospital’s conduct in allowing a somewhat confused 74-year-old patient to smoke in bed, although he had been taking a mild sedative.
In Paulen v. Shinnick, 291 Mich. 288, 289 N.W. 162 (1939), the Michigan Supreme Court was presented with a case where a mental patient had distracted a nurse by asking her to retrieve a fallen thimble and had then jumped out of an unlocked window. The court determined that whether the nurse had acted negligently by unlocking the window at the patient’s request and failing to lock the window before retrieving *920the thimble were not questions upon which the jury required the advice of experts. Paulen was cited with approval on a related issue in Quick.
The above cases demonstrate that the supervision of Ranter’s bath was also a routine administrative type of duty; therefore, expert testimony is not necessary to establish whether or not Murray was negligent in leaving Ranter alone for a few moments. Contrary to the argument of the majority, the jury would not be required to engage in “guesswork” to determine whether Murray was negligent; rather, it may be assumed that testimony will be received by way of relevant hospital records and from hospital staff and Murray herself. From this information the jury would be able to determine for itself what should have constituted reasonable care in proportion to Ranter’s inability to look after herself and whether that care was rendered.
I would therefore remand for trial without requiring that expert testimony be offered to establish Murray’s negligence.

. See also this court’s recent decision in Roettger v. United Hospitals of St. Paul, Inc., 380 N.W.2d 856 (Minn.Ct.App.1986), where a hospital patient had been attacked by an intruder. We held in Roettger that expert testimony was unnecessary to establish whether hospital security procedures were adequate, citing the reasonable care standard of Sylvester v. Northwestern Hospital of Minneapolis, 236 Minn. 384, 53 N.W.2d 17 (1952).