stating that "[w]here competent medical authority is divided, a physician will not be held responsible if in the exercise of his judgment he followed a course of treatment advocated by a considerable number of recognized and respected professionals in his given area of expertise.”
How later courts described this case
- stating that "[w]here competent medical authority is divided, a physician will not be held responsible if in the exercise of his judgment he followed a course of treatment advocated by a considerable number of recognized and respected professionals in his given area of expertise.”
- from time to time referring to the two schools doctrine as applicable in cases involving “medical practitioners” or “medical experts”
- “we do not attempt to place a numerical certainty on what constitutes a ‘considerable number’”
- allowing "two schools of thought” instruction in appropriate cases
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McDERMOTT, Justice,
concurring.
When a physician is charged with employing a course of treatment and it fails of its purpose though properly and carefully administered, the issue becomes whether that treatment was an acceptable medical procedure which the physician was justified in believing would work a cure. The question involved is not was it done negligently, but should it have been done at all. That question is beyond the ability of laymen to answer: whether it were best to chill or heat, use medicines, intervene with scalpel or await nature, or approach from back, front, top or bottom to reach the site of ill, are questions over which doctors disagree. One group of doctors, of skill and competence may withhold the scalpel, another group of equal competence may believe in quick response. When each group has its advocates, and each has its arguable reasons, a doctor of either, cannot be faulted if he properly administers the one to his knowledge and experience seems the better, so long as that group is comprised of a sufficient number of reputable and respected members.
Thus, an isolated expert cannot argue it was his own belief that a procedure was inappropriate, because then this belief would be elevated, against experience and knowledge, to a separate level, though a considerable portion of the world of medicine be against it.
I join in the opinion of the majority.