A patient goes into surgery for a right hip replacement and the surgeon replaces the left hip. The surgeon would MOST LIKELY be charged with:

In the scenario presented, where the surgeon mistakenly replaces the left hip instead of the right hip, the most fitting charge is malpractice. Malpractice occurs when a healthcare professional fails to provide the standard level of care that a competent professional in the same field would have delivered, leading to harm or injury to the patient. This situation illustrates a severe deviation from accepted medical practices, as the surgeon’s error could have resulted in significant harm or a negative outcome for the patient.

In this case, the surgeon's failure to identify and operate on the correct hip demonstrates a lack of proper judgment or care, which underpins the legal definition of malpractice. This encompasses actions such as not verifying the surgical site or miscommunication within the surgical team, which directly affects patient safety and trust in medical care.

While fraud, negligence, and assault may be relevant in different contexts, they do not precisely capture the nature of the surgeon’s error in this case. Negligence requires an element of duty and breach, but malpractice specifically focuses on the professional standard of care within the healthcare environment. Fraud involves deception for gain, and assault refers to physical harm or the threat thereof, neither of which apply to a surgical mistake stemming from professional incompetence rather than malice or intent.