Court Opinion

ID: 9854455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:07:50.829338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:05.344707
License: Public Domain

WIGGINS, J.,
(special concurrence).
I agree with the majority that the locality rule is still a part of medical-malpractice jurisprudence in Iowa. In today’s society, a physician in rural Iowa should possess the same skill, care, and ordinary learning as a physician from any metropolitan area in this country. Physicians have the benefit of continuing medical education and access to medical journals allowing physicians to stay up to date on the latest methods of diagnosis and treatment. The availability of facilities, equipment, and resources of a locality are circumstances a jury can consider to determine whether a physician used the degree of skill, care, and learning ordinarily possessed and exercised by other physicians in similar circumstances.
I also think a court should not give an instruction that incorporates the locality rule, because the uniform jury instruction adequately covers the rule.2 See Vachon v. Broadlawns Med. Found., 490 N.W.2d 820, 824 (Iowa 1992) (holding an instruction incorporating the honest mistake doctrine did not constitute reversible error; however, we found it prejudicial enough that in future trials the court should not give such an instruction in a malpractice case).
We have adopted the following guidelines in drafting instructions:
1. Instructions should not marshal the evidence or give undue prominence to any particular aspect of a case;
2. Courts, when instructing the jury, should not attempt to warn against every mistake or misapprehension a jury may make;
3. Jurors must be left to their intelligent apprehension and application of the rules put forth in the instructions.
*92Stover v. Lakeland Square Owners Ass’n, 434 N.W.2d 866, 868 (Iowa 1989). As with the honest mistake instruction, the instruction given in this case gave undue prominence to the locality rule. A jury can consider the facilities, equipment, and resources available to the physician at the time of the physician’s diagnosis and treatment simply by applying the language of the instruction, requiring the jury to decide whether a physician used the degree of skill, care, and learning ordinarily possessed and exercised by other physicians in similar circumstances.
LAVORATO, C.J., and STREIT, J., join this special concurrence.

. Uniform Jury instruction 1600.2 states, "[a] physician must use the degree of skill, care and learning ordinarily possessed and exercised by other physicians in similar circumstances.” See II Iowa Civ. Jury Instructions 1600.2 (1997).