Snider v Henniger and Another

(1993) 4 Med LR 211

BRITISH COLUMBIA SUPREME COURT

and Mr Justice HAMILTON

Gynaecologist — Negligence — Consent to treatment — Hysterectomy — Post-miscarriage dilatation and curettage (D&C) operation — Duty of care — Whether gynaecologist should have informed general practitioner and patient that bleeding from laceration in uterus wall could not be resolved by placing of suture over laceration — Vaginal bleeding — Whether gynaecologist should have performed a laparoscopy or laparotomy in order to discover source of bleeding — Hysterectomy — Whether gynaecologist under duty of care to inform patient suffering from vaginal bleeding that hysterectomy was possibility in future — Whether prior to operation blood transfusion should have been ordered — Whether gynaecologist and general practitioner were negligent in allowing too great a time to elapse between bleeding and surgery — Causation — Whether causal link existed between gynaecologist's failure to communicate with patient and her anxiety and stress — General practitioner — Whether general practitioner was negligent in failing to make inquiries from gynaecologist as to alternatives to hysterectomy or seek opinion of another gynaecologist