Revision Note

Part heading added by revisor.

§453-1 Practice of medicine defined. For the purposes of this chapter the practice of medicine by a physician or an osteopathic physician includes the use of drugs and medicines, water, electricity, hypnotism, osteopathic medicine, or any means or method, or any agent, either tangible or intangible, for the treatment of disease in the human subject; provided that when a duly licensed physician or osteopathic physician pronounces a person affected with any disease hopeless and beyond recovery and gives a written certificate to that effect to the person affected or the person's attendant nothing herein shall forbid any person from giving or furnishing any remedial agent or measure when so requested by or on behalf of the affected person.

This section shall not amend or repeal the law respecting the treatment of those affected with Hansen's disease.

For purposes of this chapter, "osteopathic medicine" means the utilization of full methods of diagnosis and treatment in physical and mental health and disease, including the prescribing and administration of drugs and biologicals of all kinds, operative surgery, obstetrics, radiological, and other electromagnetic emissions, and placing special emphasis on the interrelation of the neuro-musculoskeletal system to all other body systems, and the amelioration of disturbed structure-function relationships by the clinical application of the osteopathic diagnosis and therapeutic skills for the maintenance of health and treatment of disease. [L 1896, c 60, §2; am L 1909, c 133, §1; RL 1925, §1023; RL 1935, §1201; RL 1945, §2502; am L 1949, c 53, §29 and c 63, §1; RL 1955, §64-1; am L 1965, c 218, §1; HRS §453-1; am L 1969, c 152, §1; am L 1981, c 185, §1; am L 1983, c 124, §16; gen ch 1985; am L 2008, c 5, §1]

Cross References

Determination of death, see §327C-1.

Attorney General Opinions

Medical acupuncture is not sufficiently distinct from traditional acupuncture so as to fall outside the scope of the practice of acupuncture. Physicians licensed by board of medical examiners cannot practice medical acupuncture absent licensure by board of acupuncture. Att. Gen. Op. 03-5.

Law Journals and Reviews

Should The Right To Die Be Protected? Physician Assisted Suicide And Its Potential Effect On Hawai‘i. 19 UH L. Rev. 783 (1997).

Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Laboratory to the State of Hawai‘i. 29 UH L. Rev. 269 (2006).

Case Notes

"Practice" defined. 21 H. 465 (1913).

Decision of private hospitals concerning granting of staff privileges to licensed doctors is subject to judicial review if hospital has received government funds. 53 H. 475, 497 P.2d 564 (1972).