LAUSR

The Singapore Court of Appeal issued a landmark judgment on the legal test for negligence in medical advice in Hii Chii Kok v Ooi Peng Jin London Lucien and Another [2017] SGCA 38 (HCK). The previous precedent of Khoo James and another v Gunapathy d/o Muniandy and another appeal [2002] 1 SLR(R) 1024 held that the standard of care, including the provision of advice to the patient, was to be judged by Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1WLR 583 and subjected to the addendum in Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1988] AC 232. A doctor will satisfy the Bolam-Bolitho standard of care if her conduct is supported by a responsible body of medical opinion, which is logically defensible. In HCK, the court held that a blanket application of Bolam-Bolitho to all aspects of medical care is incompatible with the Bseismic shift^ in medical ethics and in societal attitudes, which now places a premium on a more patient-centric model of care that is less paternalistic and which respects patient autonomy (¶120). As such, it set out a modified version of the test adopted by the U.K. Supreme Court in Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11. The modified Montgomery test inHCK departed from Bolam-Bolitho for negligence with respect to medical advice but retained it for diagnosis and treatment. In what follows, we will briefly describe the facts and reasons underpinning the HCK decision, highlight key differences between the Montgomery and modifiedMontgomery test in HCK, and examine some implications of the modified test for medical practice.