Malpractice and Negligence: What’s the Difference?

Malpractice and Negligence: What’s the Difference?

Are medical malpractice and medical negligence different? Is there a distinction you should understand before bringing a lawsuit? The answer is no, because malpractice is a type of negligence.

What Is Negligence?

Negligence is unreasonable conduct that causes harm to another. Texting while driving is unreasonable. If a car crashes into you because the driver was texting and driving, the driver likely committed negligence. If you bring a negligence lawsuit, a jury will decide whether the driver met the “reasonable person standard”—whether the driver acted like a reasonable person would under the same circumstances.

What Is Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is negligence by medical providers. Medical malpractice thus occurs when unreasonable conduct by a healthcare provider harms the patient. For example, if a patient’s leg has to amputated because doctors and nurses fail to treat the lack of a foot pulse as an emergency, the doctors and nurses probably committed negligence.

If you bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against a healthcare provider, the jury will decide whether the provider’s conduct met the profession’s “standard of care.” In other words, the jury will decide whether the provider exercised the care and skill ordinarily employed by healthcare professionals generally under the same circumstances.

The Bell Law Firm represents clients who have suffered death or catastrophic injury in medical malpractice and other personal injury cases.