During a trial, the jury must be provided with information on the acceptable standard of care, in order to determine whether or not the doctor/defendant had been medically negligent.
What is the meaning for the phrase standard of care?
That phrase refers to the level of care and skill that is expected from a health care provider. Not all health care providers must adhere to the same standard of care. The acceptable standard for a given provider has been determined by the practices of similar providers.
At no time is any health care provider expected to deliver ideal or perfect care.
Not all states have same way for judging a doctor’s ability to satisfy the demand for exercising an acceptable standard of care.
In some states the extent to which a doctor has satisfied that standard is based on how well he or she has delivered a reasonable level of care, according to the judgment of a average physician.
If a physician has chosen to focus on a certain specialty, then that same physician’s performance must be judged against the level of operations performed by those doctors that have been trained in that specific physician’s specialty.
Some states follow the second school of thought, principle. That principle recognizes the fact that there might be more than one acceptable method for achieving a certain result, when diagnosing or treating a given patient’s medical condition.
Who might become the target of a medical malpractice lawsuit?
• A physician
• A nurse or a nurse practitioner
• A pathologist at a laboratory
• A technician that has performed an x-ray or an imaging test
• A dietician
• A pharmacist: Pharmacists are supposed to provide customers with useful information and warnings, when dispensing a given medicine.
• A medical clinic
• A hospital: Hospitals can be penalized for keeping a physician that has been charged with malpractice on their staff.
Why do most patients find it difficult to win a medical malpractice case?
During the course of the trial, the jury must receive details on the acceptable level of care. Those details need to be presented clearly, so that the jury can make a well-informed decision. Juries that do not understand specific information could feel inclined to dismiss the importance of that same information.
Personal Injury Lawyer in London understand that members of the jury usually trust their own doctors. Consequently, each of those same jurists could find it hard to question the testimony from any doctor. In other words, jurists tend to trust the testimony from any physician.
As a result, juries seldom rule against the target of a medical malpractice case. The lawyer for the plaintiff must anticipate the jury’s likely verdict, and work to weaken the arguments that have been made by the defense team.