Wilsher Vs. Essex Area Health Authority

To compare and contrast between the standard of care on amateur and professional defendants, according to the case of Wilsher v Essex Area Health Authority (1986) 3 All ER 801, it is held that they expect a junior doctor to perform compliant to the standard of a competent and skilled doctor working in the same post. As doctors are being seen as a professional job, they do not have special allowance for the breach in duty of care, no matter whether they are beginners or the experienced ones. More often than not, defendant will argue for a lower standard of care due to The defendant cannot expostulate for lowering the standard of care because of his lack of experience on his work, while skilled defendant applying a higher standard of care.
Therefore, it is held with the same standard of care on specialists no matter they are the junior ones or the ones who are in the senior posts. There may seem different standards of care between the amateur and professional defendants as professionals are only required to carry out task to the standard of a skilled person or people in that professional field while for the under skilled defendant, there is no allowance for the excuse of lack of experience and they will be determined whether they have breached the duty of care individually which may lead to subjectivity in the judgments. However, with the aid of the objective reasonable test and the Bolitho test, it is shown that when the practice is not logically supportable, the court may reject the practice, even if the defendant is a profession.