5.50G MEDICAL JUDGMENT
A doctor may have to exercise judgment when diagnosing and treating a patient. However, alternative diagnosis/treatment choices must be in accordance with accepted standard medical practice. Therefore, your focus should be on whether standard medical practice allowed judgment to be exercised as to diagnosis and treatment alternatives and, if so, whether what the doctor actually did to diagnose or treat this patient was accepted as standard medical practice. If you determine that the standard of care for treatment or diagnosis did not allow for the choices or judgments the defendant doctor made here, then the doctor would be negligent.
