The professional standard of care in clinical negligence

Clinical guidelines are important healthcare quality management tools which have become more widely known and accepted in the NHS today. There are some problems with the terminology used regarding clinical guidelines and sometimes they are confused with protocols. Clinical guidelines have a number of legal implications and they could be influential in determining the standard of care to be expected in a particular case. The Bolam case shows that a number of care approaches are acceptable as long as they are reasonable. The developers of clinical guidelines should develop an audit trail of their work and build in review dates.