What Is the Standard of Care?

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.