A more objective approach seems appropriate, considering the lack of medical knowledge common to the judiciary and juries. Judges are elected or appointed attorneys who usually have minimal scientific training, if any. In fact, the potential for in-depth medical knowledge of a jury member is greater, since medical professionals serve as jurors. Ordinarily, jurors are precluded as lay persons from making findings as to what constitutes a breach of a physician's standard of care. However, they may apply lay judgment to find a physician's actions improper if the actions are so obviously outside parameters of good practice or common sense, such as leaving instruments inside a patient after surgery 12 .
Information flow affects the standard of care.
Access to common medical information through technology encourages clinical practice standardization. The medical, insurance, and public policy communities have all contributed to the development of practice standardization, especially with heightened research comparing patient outcomes across geographical boundaries. While the physician's exposure to new information was once geographically bound, information flow has circled outward away from its physical moorings. Printing presses, newspapers, and journals lifted information away from physical sources. More recently, telephones, televisions, videotapes, and computers have carried information further into the evanescent realm of electronic transfer.