What is the Standard of Care?
What is the “standard of care” in a medical malpractice case in North Carolina? Many people have asked us this question at Duncan Law.
In North Carolina to be successful in a medical malpractice action, you must prove to a jury or judge that the defendant healthcare provider deviated from or violated the standard of care. This is usually done by testimony of an expert witness, usually another healthcare provider in the same specialty as the defendant healthcare provider. The North Carolina legislature has defined the standard of care in North Carolina General Statute 90-21.12. The law states:
“In any action for damages for personal injury or death arising out of the furnishing or failure to furnish professional services in the performance of medical, dental, or other healthcare, the defendant shall not be liable for the payment of damages unless the trier of the facts is satisfied by the greater weight of the evidence that the care of such healthcare provider was not in accordance with the standards of practice among members of the same health care profession with similar training and experience situated in the same or similar communities at the time of the alleged act giving rise to this cause of action.”
You are probably asking what does all of this legal jargon mean?
Basically, the law states that a doctor, dentist, nurse, etc. must act within the same standards as other persons in their profession within the same or similar community at the time of the alleged medical malpractice action. In other words, a heart surgeon should practice and use the same guidelines and procedures as other heart surgeons in similar communities. As an exaggerated example, all heart surgeons do not use chain saws to open a patient’s chest. If a heart surgeon were to use a chain saw and injure the patient, then that doctor would had violated the standard of care. He should have known the use of the chainsaw was not within the standards for heart surgeons.
I have had many clients express to me that if there was a bad outcome for a medical treatment then the doctor must had made a mistake and therefore violated the standard of care. Not necessarily!
An example- sometimes patients are put under anesthesia and they never wake up and die. Did the anesthesiologist violate the standard of care by allowing the patient to die? The key question will be did the anesthesiologist do anything different under the same conditions and circumstances as another different anesthesiologist would had done? Sometimes, under no fault of anyone, patients have a reaction to the anesthesia and die. This would not necessarily be a violation of the standard of care. However, if the anesthesiologist forgot to turn on the oxygen for the patient and the patient died from lack of oxygen, then the failure to turn on the oxygen for the patient is a violation of the standard of care and the anesthesiologist probably committed medical malpractice.
We hope this helps you in understanding the requirement of deviating or violating the standard of care in North Carolina that is required for a successful medical malpractice case. If we can help you with a possible medical malpractice case that you may have contact us today.
