Trindle v. Wheeler

SHENK, J.

This is an appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment entered on a directed verdict for the defendant, a physician, in an action to recover damages for alleged negligence in the treatment of an ankle injury.

The plaintiff had been employed for over thirty-five years as a teacher in the schools at Indianapolis, Indiana. While spending her vacation with her sister in Riverside, California, she sprained and resprained her ankle. Some twenty years previously the same ankle had been broken and the X-ray revealed signs of enlargement and traumatic arthritis. When she sustained the recent sprains she consulted the defendant, who was practicing his profession in Riverside. He prescribed diathermy as treatment for the injury. He accompanied the plaintiff into the treatment room adjoining his office and instructed a nurse trained and experienced in such treatments to apply diathermy to the ankle at 3,000 milliamperes for twenty minutes. The plaintiff’s shoe and stocking were removed, she was placed in a recumbent position on a bed, and the nurse proceeded to adjust the electrodes to the ankle. The electrodes were encased in rubber pads. A folded towel was wrapped around each electrode, and the plaintiff’s ankle placed between them. The electrodes were held in position by small bags of sand. They were connected to the diathermy machine by wires. The nurse set the dial at 3,000 milliamperes for a twenty-minute treatment. Both the doctor and the nurse left the room and shut the door.

The plaintiff testified that she was given no instruction by the defendant or the nurse; that after the lapse of a few minutes the ankle became uncomfortably hot, and that when the heat had become unbearable she called for help. The defendant immediately entered the room and turned off the machine which at that point registered 3,500 milliamperes. Eight minutes had elapsed from the beginning of the treatment until the time when defendant turned off the machine. The machine in that time had jumped to 3,500 milliamperes. The plaintiff sustained a burn on her anlde about the size of

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a half dollar or a dollar. According to the testimony of the defendant and his assistants a small table adjacent to the head of the bed on which plaintiff was lying was provided with a push button for the use of diathermy patients. The nurse testified that she pointed out the buzzer to the plaintiff and told her to call if the heat became uncomfortable, and that such instructions were customarily given to every diathermy patient. The plaintiff testified that the push button was not pointed out and that no such instruction was given to her.