Georgia treats medical negligence as a question of professional conduct measured against a defined benchmark rather than against a perfect outcome. The governing statute, O.C.G.A. § 51-1-27, states that anyone who practices medicine or surgery for compensation must use a reasonable degree of care and skill, and that an injury resulting from the absence of that care and skill is a tort for which the patient may recover.
The phrasing matters. The law does not ask whether the best specialist in the country would have acted differently, nor whether the least experienced provider might have made the same choice. It asks whether the provider met the level of care and skill that the medical profession ordinarily uses under similar conditions and circumstances. Conduct that falls below that level, whether through an act or an omission, is what the law calls negligence.
Several principles follow from this framing. Adverse results do not by themselves establish negligence, because medicine carries inherent uncertainty and known risks. The standard is evaluated using the medical knowledge available at the time of treatment, not knowledge that emerged later. The benchmark applies across the range of clinical activity, including history taking, diagnosis, treatment selection, procedural technique, medication management, and follow up.
Georgia courts generally rely on qualified expert testimony to establish what the applicable standard required in a given situation, since the content of competent practice usually falls outside common knowledge. Under O.C.G.A. § 24-7-702, that expert ordinarily must come from the same profession as the defendant and must have actively practiced or taught in the relevant area during at least three of the five years before the events at issue.
In short, medical negligence in Georgia describes a measurable gap between what a reasonably careful provider would have done and what the provider actually did, evaluated through professional standards rather than hindsight.