Skip to main content

Standard of Care - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody. Welcome back for another lesson on legal and ethical issues in patient care. In this lesson, we are discussing the standard of care. The standard of care refers to the acceptable practices, methods, and standards of health professionals in providing care to patients consistent with the standards accepted within the medical community. As we've discussed in other lessons, following the standard of care is essential both to ensure patient safety and deliver quality health care, but also to protect yourself from legal and professional consequences of violating those standards. Another way of thinking about the standard of care is that it refers the degree of caution and attention practiced by a health care worker. In other words, standard of care are the rules all health care workers must follow to ensure all patients are treated equitably or fairly. These actions are judged by whether it matches what would be expected of any reasonable person with the same degree of skill and training in the same circumstances. This relates to the legal legal legal