Which term describes a professional failure to meet standards that harms a patient?

• A. Malpractice
• B. Assault
• C. Battery
• D. Negligence

Answer: (A)

This is about professional liability in nursing. When a healthcare professional fails to meet the accepted standards of care and that failure harms a patient, the issue is malpractice. Malpractice occurs because there is a duty to provide competent, standard-of-care treatment, a breach of that duty, a direct link between the breach and the injury, and actual damages resulting from the harm. It’s different from negligence, which is a broader term for carelessness that can occur outside a professional context; malpractice specifies that the breach happened within professional practice. Assault and battery involve intentional acts of threat or harmful contact and aren’t about failing to meet professional standards, so they don’t describe this scenario.