Legal Standards Become Medical Standards of Care

In Osborn v. Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, the California Court of Appeal confirmed that "professional prudence is defined by actual or accepted practice within a profession, rather than theories about what 'should' have been done."



In the medical futility context, this is a problem.  While clinicians judge that continued life-sustaining interventions are inappropriate, they continue them.  Since, legally speaking, actions speak louder than words, clinicians are creating the very standard of care that they do not want to comply with.



In this brief clip, Richard Anderson, the CEO of the Doctor's Company, the nation's largest medical malpractice insurance provider, explains how defensive medicine produces this result.