Vasanthi a/p B Balakrisnan v 1. ) Sunway Medical Centre Sdn. Bhd. 2. ) Dr Ahmad Hisham Abd Rashid

Case Significance

Illustrates the evidential burden in a medical-negligence action and the standard against which a surgeon's treatment and advice are assessed: a patient must establish a breach of the duty of care — whether in treatment or in advising of options and risks — that caused actionable harm, and here the claim against the hospital and orthopaedic surgeon was dismissed.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam, delivered by Judicial Commissioner Rozi binti Bainon, is a medical-negligence claim brought by a patient against a hospital and an orthopaedic surgeon. The plaintiff, a woman aged in her fifties working as an insurance agent, sued the first defendant, Sunway Medical Centre Sdn Bhd, and the second defendant, an orthopaedic surgeon who practised at the hospital under a doctor's practice agreement, in respect of injuries and a fracture of the radius and ulna at her left wrist. Her claim was that the treatment, care, management and surgery had not been carried out carefully and in accordance with accepted medical standards, and that the orthopaedic surgeon had failed to advise her of the available treatment options and had not applied current and accepted treatment.

The court dismissed the claim. Applying the principles governing a doctor's duty of care — the standard of a responsible body of medical opinion in matters of diagnosis and treatment, tempered by the duty to advise a patient of material risks and reasonable alternatives — the court examined whether the surgeon had breached the requisite standard and whether any breach had caused the patient's injury. On the evidence, it was not satisfied that the plaintiff had established a breach of the duty of care in the treatment, management or surgery, or that the surgeon had failed in his advisory duty in a manner that caused actionable harm. Finding the claim not made out, the court dismissed it and ordered the plaintiff to pay costs of RM10,000 to the first defendant and RM20,000 to the second defendant, subject to allocatur, holding those costs to be fair and reasonable. The judgment illustrates the evidential burden on a patient in a medical-negligence action and the standard against which a surgeon's treatment and advice are assessed.