The standard of care is a level and quality of care physicians, nurses and other medical professionals are expected to maintain when treating patients. If a patient suffers an injury due to their medical care and wants to hold a medical provider financially responsible, it’s necessary to prove that the doctor failed to meet their standard of care.

In other words, your medical malpractice lawyer must answer the question, “What would a reasonable, properly trained physician do in a similar circumstance?” Then they must prove your doctor failed to act in accordance with that standard.

How Is the Standard of Care Determined?

The “standard of care” is sometimes clear and straightforward. If a doctor prescribed a patient a medication containing ingredients that they knew the patient was allergic to, they obviously failed to meet the standard of care. A reasonable doctor wouldn’t have made that mistake.

A doctor who is considered a leader in the field – often a teaching physician – will be called on to testify to what the standard of care should have been for the situation in which the injury occurred.

That professional will testify to what a “reasonable” doctor would have done in your case.

Medical Negligence Vs. Unintentional Errors

Doctors and medical experts can make mistakes, but the mistake may not rise to the level of malpractice. A mistake may not be medical malpractice or even negligence if a reasonable professional in the same field might have made the same mistake.

An example of this would be a doctor diagnosing the wrong illness with similar symptoms. A medical expert is not always held liable for these types of mistakes. If they were, certain types of doctors – like internists – would be perpetually fighting lawsuits.

Physicians are also not held liable if an accident happened, but the standard of care was still met. If they made all of the most reasonable decisions and took action at a reasonable time given the circumstances, you most likely will not have a case.

Brandon Orosco V. Maricopa County Special Healthcare District and District Medical Group

To better understand what is and isn’t malpractice, it’s worth it to consider some actual cases. Orosco visited Maricopa Medical Center to get treatments for burns he suffered at work. Part of the treatment required his doctors to insert a catheter on a wire into one of his veins. The doctor ended up getting the catheter in an artery instead of a vein and they had to redo it.

That could be categorized as a mistake or an error, but it hadn’t yet risen to the level of negligence or malpractice. What happened next is what the case was really about.

The doctor and nurse couldn’t find the original wire. They concluded it must have already been removed and disposed of. It hadn’t. During X-rays radiologists failed to report the wire, which mean it was left in Orosco until a CT scan identified it at a later date.

The wire eventually resulted in significant damages that left Orosco in permanent need of pain management medication.

In many medical malpractice cases you’ll see a cascade of errors, or multiple failures to perform corrective actions. Things like transparency or the timing of when a doctor notifies a patient of life-saving information often play a role in negligence and medical malpractice cases.

The Standard of Care in Emergency Situations

Standard of care is often viewed through the lens of contributing factors, like time constraints or a state of emergency.

If a patient needs life-saving treatment right away, emergency medical professionals must act quickly. In these cases, the medical expert may not be liable for errors that potentially could have been avoided had they possessed hours instead of seconds or minutes.

It might not be considered negligent if the wrong treatment is prescribed based on the lack of adequate time for testing or results. In these cases, the patient’s level of harm is also considered.

Who Is a Standard of Care Expert?

Arizona Rules of Evidence 702 lays out the criteria for who is and isn’t an expert qualified to testify to the standard of care. There are other Arizona statutes, ARS § 12-2604 and ARS § 12-561, that further define who would and would not be considered an expert for medical malpractice cases. Many of these rules are intended to prevent conflicts of interests and ensure honest testimony.

Do You Have a Medical Malpractice Case in Phoenix?

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