What is the Standard of Care?

Takeaways

• The standard of care is determined by the medical community and is based on research, literature, and experience.
• In medical malpractice cases, the standard of care is used to determine if a doctor or medical provider met the required standard.
• Failure to diagnose cancer is an example where the standard of care is crucial.
• Delay in diagnosing cancer may impact the causation element in a lawsuit.

Transcript

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Welcome to Injury Insight, the podcast that unravels the stories behind personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits, examines the science behind the claims, and spotlights the fight for justice in the healthcare system. Your host for the podcast is Mike Duffy, a practicing attorney with over 25 years of experience.

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So today we're talking about the standard of care and how the standard of care factors into medical malpractice claims. The standard of care is the community determination as to what a medical provider is supposed to do under a certain set of circumstances. That community is the community of medical providers. So if nine out of ten doctors do something in a particular way,

Everybody's supposed to do it in that particular way. That's how the standard of care works. The standard of care is based upon medical research, upon literature, upon experience, upon acts of other doctors. It's, as with most determinations as to what we do in life, it is based upon everything that preceded it and how those things that preceded it worked out. What we deal with quite often

is where a medical provider will tell us or a doctor will tell us that, well, I did the thing I did or didn't do because that's the way I've always done it, because that's how I do it. That's not really the issue in a medical malpractice case. The issue is what does the community say you should have done under those circumstances? This is how medicine advances. If everybody only did the same thing over and over again,

medicine would never advance. Medicine is always doing further research, is always doing further experiments, is always doing providing further care and seeing the results that that care allows to occur and making determinations as to faced with the same set of circumstances in a future setting, what should you be doing? In a lawsuit, what we're looking to do is make determinations first of all as to what the standard of care is under a certain set of circumstances.

and then determine whether a doctor or medical provider has met that standard of care. So an example of identifying and determining the standard of care and whether a doctor or medical provider met that standard of care would be a failure to diagnose cancer case. Obviously, a doctor is not giving anybody cancer. But the medical research and medical literature has identified

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signs and symptoms consistent with certain types of cancer. For instance, in a case of breast cancer, there might be a lump that a woman feels or a doctor feels or a man feels. Breast cancer is not as prevalent in the male community. It certainly occurs in the male community, but it's most often associated with female patients. A patient may have a lump. There may be a change in the condition of the breast itself.

These things, the standard of care, require certain things. There might be a biopsy based upon the type of lump they feel. It might be a mammography done. It might be surgery itself done under certain circumstances. There might be a lot of different things that the standard of care requires. Where we would come in is when a patient has felt a lump or when a doctor has felt a lump and has done nothing about it.

has not sent the patient for further care for a biopsy or for a mammogram or a sonogram or an MRI or whatever the standard of care under those circumstances require. Similarly, where one of these tests may have been done where a doctor did not see on the film or in the pathology the cancer that the patient believes is there. Standard of care requires a radiologist to see what is on the film to be seen.

A standard of care requires a pathologist to correctly read the pathology slides. Where we would come in is where those things don't happen. So the standard of care is the basis upon which we make determinations as to whether there has been a failure or a delay in diagnosing cancer of any type. This also plays into things we've talked about in the past about causation. It may well be that a doctor fails to identify a lump in a woman's breast.

but identifies it a month later. In most instances, that one month delay is not going to be a meaningful delay for purposes of causation, meaning the ability of the lawyer to say that something significant changed in the treatment of this patient as a result of the delay. So if you think that there has been a delay in diagnosing cancer in you or a loved one, call Duffy and Duffy and let us let you know whether or not there's something we can do to help.

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This podcast is for entertainment and educational information only. Nothing said here should be construed as constituting legal advice, nor does it imply any relationship between the listener and Duffy and Duffy law. If you have any questions about a personal injury or medical malpractice issue you are facing and want to see if you have a case, please contact Duffy and Duffy to schedule a confidential consultation. You can call us at 516 -259 -3775.

or email Mike Duffy at mduffy@duffyduffylaw.com and we'll get back to you quickly.