When the phrase “standard of care” is used in medicine, it refers to the duty a medical professional has to his or her patient. As defined by the law, it examines the types of conduct considered to be negligent in a medical setting by healthcare professionals ranging from doctors to pharmacists. The standard of care is vitally important because the medical community cares for all of us at some point when we are at our most vulnerable. There must be some commonsense approaches to what that care should involve since a breach of the standard of care can have very serious consequences. This is particularly true when looking at cases of birth injuries or stillbirths.
There are several questions that must be asked when determining whether the standard of care has been breached in a birth injury case:
- Was there any way that the medical practitioner could have foreseen their actions, or lack thereof, causing harm?
- Did those actions/lack of actions actually result in harm?
- Could that harm have been prevented in some way if different steps had been implemented to reduce the risk?
For example, if your doctor fails to notice due to inattention or negligence that your baby’s heart rate has plummeted during labor and the baby suffers oxygen loss and develops cerebral palsy due to this mistake, your doctor might have breached the standard of care and be legally liable for your child’s injury.
Several recent stillbirth and birth injury lawsuits have highlighted the crucial importance of meeting the standard of care when delivering babies. In one case in Tennessee, a baby boy was stillborn after a medical team at the mother’s local medical center ignored signs of fetal distress and sent her home rather than continuing to monitor her and notifying the on-call OB/GYN of her abdominal pain and other symptoms. In a case in New Jersey, a baby boy was stillborn after a very difficult labor and delivery was attempted, despite the baby being too large for a vaginal delivery and the mother having various health problems that made a cesarean section advisable. Finally, in a case in Florida, a baby boy suffered a severe brachial plexus injury when the midwife chose to deliver him vaginally despite his high birth weight and the mother’s high-risk pregnancy. In each of these cases, the plaintiffs allege that the deaths and injury could have been avoided if the standard of care had been met and different actions taken. Whether their lawsuits succeed will hinge upon their lawyers proving that breach, and in each case, it seems likely that they will be able to do so because the standard against which medical professionals are judged is not unreasonable. It does not expect or demand optimum care at all times, nor does it apply the improved vision of hindsight in determining negligence. It only asks, “What would another doctor in the same position as this doctor have done under these circumstances?” expecting that each physician will act up to the general standards of other, similarly experienced physicians in similar circumstances.
Childbirth is in some ways so routine that people often forget it can be a dangerous process, and one during which it is crucial to have excellent, reliable medical care. When something unexpected happens, the mother and baby need a team that reacts appropriately and swiftly, performing all of the steps that are necessary to keep both mother and baby safe and healthy. Sometimes of course things can go wrong that are beyond anyone’s control, but an accident due to negligence is unacceptable if it results in an injured baby or, even more tragically, causes a loss of life. In these situations, the responsible party should be held accountable, whether it is a doctor, a nurse, the hospital or clinic, or even – as is the case in two of the lawsuits previously mentioned – the U.S. government itself. If a birth injury lawsuit succeeds, the parents can use the money to cover medical costs and therapies, among other things, which they would not have needed had the standard of care been met in the first place. That is small consolation in most birth injury or stillbirth lawsuits, but it is the only way there is to seek some kind of justice for yourself and your child.
