The relevant standard of care varies depending upon the circumstances. The standard will depend upon the responsible party’s specialty—for example, a heart surgeon would be held to a higher standard of care during a heart surgery than a family practitioner. It will also depend upon the type of illness or injury involved and can vary based upon how tested and established the procedure needed to treat the ailment is. Consulting with other medical experts is often necessary to establish the relevant standard of care to show that medical malpractice occurred in cases where the physician or responsible party’s conduct was not egregious—leaving an instrument in a surgical patient’s body is an example of egregious conduct, while it may be more difficult to establish that failure to diagnose a rare disease was malpractice.