If you are thinking about filing a medical malpractice suit against a doctor for poor or negligence care, it is vital that you understand what the term standard of care means and how it works. It is one of the vital components to any medical malpractice lawsuit.

Defining The Standard Of Care

Standard of care is a legal term that is used in medical malpractice cases and is also a term that is used in the medical field as well. It refers to the idea that the level of care that you received from the doctor when you are being treated should be the same level of care that you receive from another doctor.

For example, if came in with a specific condition, and your doctor did a physical and ran a set series of tests, another doctor with a similar level of qualification would also do a physical and run the same battery of tests; that would be meeting the standard of care. However, say you come in with a specific condition, and your doctor tells you not to worry about it, but a second and third doctor with the same educations and qualifications would instead give you an examination and run a series of tests; in this case, your doctor did not meet a professional standard of care.

Proving Standard Of Care Was Not Meet

In your case, the job of your attorney is to prove that your doctor made choices that other doctors would not have made in the same situation. This can be proven a number of different ways. To start with, your attorney can establish what the standard procedure in the doctor's office that you went to was to treat your condition and see if what your doctor did in your case was different. From there, your attorney will then establish what the governing medical bodies recommend doing in your situation.

After that, your attorney will call expert witnesses to the stand, medical professionals who have the same level of education and training as the doctor you went to, and have them testify as to what they would have done in the same situation. To prove your case, your expert witnesses need to state under oath that they would have taken different actions than your doctor.

Proving that the standard of care was not met in your case can be a tricky situation because you have to establish what your doctor should have done instead of what they did. That is the basics to how standard of care and medical malpractice work together.  For more information, contact a lawyer from a firm like Law Office of Bernard Bolanos.