the.com/malpractice
When a professional's careless mistake breaches their duty of care and causes real harm.
means Professional negligence or misconduct by someone in a trusted role — like a doctor or lawyer — that causes harm by falling below the standard of care expected of them.
from Straightforward Latin carpentry: 'mal-' meaning bad or wrongly (the same prefix in malice and malady) bolted onto 'practice,' from Latin 'practicare,' to perform or carry out. Put them together and you get exactly what it says on the tin — bad practice. The word rose alongside the professionalization of medicine and law, when 'practice' stopped meaning just 'doing a thing repeatedly' and started meaning a licensed vocation with standards you could actually fail to meet.
- the standard
- failure to meet accepted professional care, not just a bad outcome
- common myth
- bad results alone don't prove it; negligence does
- biggest culprit
- misdiagnosis beats surgical slip-ups as top cause
- the irony
- defensive medicine meant to avoid it often adds more risk