Superior Court holding reminds of requisite expert qualifications for medical malpractice actions against physicians.

In medical malpractice actions, a nurse is not qualified to testify as an expert witness on standard of care or causation against a physician. More specifically, under 40 P.S. § 1303.512 of the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act, to testify as an expert witness in a medical malpractice action against a physician, the proposed expert must meet certain requirements. One of those requirements is that the proposed expert possess a physician’s license to practice medicine. Pennsylvania courts have interrupted this section to find that, because a nurse does not possess a physician’s license to practice medicine, a nurse is unqualified to testify as an expert on standard of care and causation against a physician. 

To see this principle in action, look no further than the Superior Court’s recent non-precedential decision in Smith. The plaintiffs in a medical malpractice action attempted to offer a registered nurse and a nurse practitioner as expert witnesses to testify on standard of care and causation against the defendant doctors and other corporate-hospital defendants. The trial court granted the defendants’ motion in limine to preclude these proposed experts from testifying as expert witnesses and, as a result, granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants, finding that under 40 P.S. § 1303.512 and Pennsylvania precedent interpreting this section, the plaintiffs’ proposed experts could not testify on the standard of care or causation against the physicians. Further, because the plaintiffs’ claims of corporate negligence were based on actions and/or inactions of the physicians, those claims against the corporate-hospital defendants were dismissed as well. On appeal, the Superior Court affirmed. In a swift opinion, the Superior Court upheld the trial court’s ruling, affirming that the proposed experts were not qualified to testify against the physicians and the corporate-hospital defendants. 
 

_{Case Law Alerts, 2nd Quarter, April 2023 is prepared by Marshall Dennehey to provide information on recent developments of interest to our readers. This publication is not intended to provide legal advice for a specific situation or to create an attorney-client relationship. Copyright © 2023 Marshall Dennehey, all rights reserved. This article may not be reprinted without the express written permission of our firm.}