Know Your Rights For Medical Malpractice | Dial-A-Law

A doctor or health care provider is negligent if they fail to provide the standard of care a reasonable doctor or health care provider practising in the same area would provide in similar circumstances. If the negligence causes injuries or illness to a person, the doctor or health care provider may be liable to pay damages (money to pay for the harm done) to the person.

It’s no excuse for a doctor to say, “I did my best. I just didn’t know any better.” If the doctor should have known better, they may be liable. For example, let’s say you see a doctor because you’re not feeling well. The doctor prescribes a drug to treat the symptoms you describe. You take the drug and it harms you. It turns out the drug was not appropriate, considering your medical history and the other drugs you were already taking. If other doctors with a similar type of medical practice would not have prescribed the drug, the doctor may be negligent.

Not every mistake or bad result means there was negligence

Doctors and health care providers are not liable for every mistake. The law recognizes that doctors often have to make quick decisions without the best information. The key question is this: did the doctor make a reasonable decision that other reasonable doctors would have made in the same situation — even if later it turns out to be the wrong decision that caused a bad result.

For example, you complain to your doctor of severe head pain. They examine you, carefully take your medical history, listen to you describe your symptoms, and order the right tests. Using the results of this examination, they decide you have an ordinary tension headache that will go away. Later, it turns out your doctor was wrong, and the pain was not caused by a tension headache. The doctor’s diagnosis was wrong. But your doctor still provided the proper standard of care, the same care that other doctors would have provided in this case. The doctor was not negligent and you probably won’t win if you sue the doctor for malpractice.

Your doctor or health care provider must meet a standard of care

The standard of care varies with the level of specialty of the doctor. The standard may be higher for specialists. And it varies with time. Today’s standard may not be good enough next year. You can’t always expect the best care available at the most sophisticated research hospital. The standard of care may be affected by the level of hospital that treats you.

In summary, not every mistake or bad result automatically means there was negligence. A doctor may take all the right steps and still make a mistake or get a bad result.