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Murphy v. Bernice Community Rehabilitation Hospital10/26/2005
mine the standard of care and whether the defendant breached the standard of care. Strange v. Shroff, 37,353 (La. App. 2d Cir. 7/16/03), 850 So. 2d 1077, 1086. Physicians are not held to a standard of absolute precision; rather, their conduct and judgment are evaluated in terms of reasonableness under the then-existing circumstances. Brown v. Eppinette, 36,405 (La. App. 2d Cir. 12/18/02), 833 So. 2d 1268, 1273; Johnston, supra. Physicians' actions are not to be evaluated on the basis of hindsight or in light of subsequent events. Johnston, supra.
Claims Against Dr. Mays
Ms. Murphy claims that Dr. Mays had a duty to determine her "weight-bearing status." She also claims that Dr. Mays should have considered the nurse's assessment of left-sided weakness noted at the time of her admission to BCRH in determining whether she was ready to begin therapy.
Dr. Mays is an orthopaedic surgeon who examined patients upon admission to BCRH. He testified that the purpose of the examination is to determine whether the patient has any condition requiring acute treatment. The examination is not to determine "weight-bearing status." Dr. Mays explained that every rehabilitation patient has some type of weight-bearing restriction or else they would not be in need of therapy. Dr. Mays also testified that he did not detect any left-sided weakness in his examination of Ms. Murphy.
Plaintiff presented the testimony of Dr. Richard Smith, a specialist in internal medicine. Dr. Smith noted that Dr. Mays did not address symptoms indicative of a stroke when he examined Ms. Murphy, but Dr. Smith also noted that diagnosing a stroke would not be in Dr. Mays' area of practice. Dr. Smith testified that a physical therapist would be the person to determine a patient's weight-bearing status. As an internist, Dr. Smith had no opinion as to whether Dr. Mays breached the standard of care required of an orthopaedic surgeon examining a patient for rehabilitation.
Neither Dr. Smith nor any other expert witness testified that Dr. Mays failed to meet the standard of care in treating Ms. Murphy. Dr. Mays examined Ms. Murphy on one occasion. He administered medication for her knee pain so as to enable her to participate in physical therapy. He did not find any left-sided weakness or any condition to indicate that she should not be in therapy. The record shows that Ms. Murphy was able to bear her own weight and ambulate to some degree upon entering BCRH, but her ability to do so was adversely affected by her severely arthritic left knee. In the absence of any expert testimony that Dr. Mays failed to meet the standard of care in his single examination of Ms. Murphy, we find nothing in our review of the record to suggest that the jury's finding regarding Dr. Mays was either manifestly erroneous or clearly wrong.
Claims Against Dr. Shaw
Ms. Murphy claims that Dr. Shaw failed to meet the standard of care in treating her at Tri-Ward Clinic and in his examination of her at BCRH. She asserts that Dr. Shaw did not recognize that she was having symptoms of a stroke when he treated her on March 25, 2002, and did not make a definitive diagnosis of her condition. She claims that he should have ordered a repeat CT scan on March 25, 2002, because indications of a stroke often take 24 to 48 hours to appear on a CT scan. She also asserts that Dr. Shaw should have reviewed the nurse's notes at BCRH which would have apprised him of the left-sided weakness assessment and would have prompted him to then order the repeat CT scan on March 28, 2002. Also, she asserts that Dr. Shaw breached the standard of care in failing to diagnose her broken femur on March 28, 2002.
When Dr. Shaw t
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