THE DUTY OF CARE, “DUE CARE”, AND THE ”REASONABLE MAN”

Once the physician/patient relationship has been established, the physician is obliged to diagnose and treat the patient’s illness or injury with “due care”.  Failure to do so constitutes negligence and is actionable.

However, negligence is often defined as the omission to do something which the “reasonable man” would do, or the doing of something which a reasonable and prudent man would not do. The concept is that the party claiming damage was owed some duty by the medical provider and that the duty was breached, causing injury.  If the store customer buys super-hot coffee and burns his legs when he spills the container on himself, he might allege that the store had a duty to serve coffee at a temperature that would not result in such burns should there be an accidental spill.

The standard the courts have traditionally used is the ”reasonable man” standard.  If the reasonable, prudent person would have avoided the difficulty, the defendant may be held to be negligent.  If the reasonable man would have acted the same way the defendant acted, no negligence can be alleged, even if the resulting injury were serious.

When it comes to the medical profession, the standard is modified and becomes the “duly careful member of the profession”.  The body of negligence law to date does NOT hold the medical provider liable for injury to the patient for not using the highest possible degree of care, even if another medical provider might have provided a higher degree of care. However, the law DOES hold him liable for not exercising the requisite skill and knowledge expected of the average practitioner of the provider’s specialty.