The legal and ethical duties imposed on the doctor to exercise due skill and care in catering medical services only arise where a doctor/patient relationship comes in contractual existence as per Indian Evidence Act. If a doctor is passing/crossing the scene of an road traffic accident/any medical emergency in which some person has been injured/sick and is in need of urgent medical/surgical attention/intervention to save the life or limb of the injured, he/she would not be held to have been negligent, if he does not render/provide medical assistance to the patient in the eye of law for violation of code of ethics/civil/criminal or consumer law, as in such cases no doctor/patient relationship has been established for medical care delivery.
If the doctor goes to the medical assistance of a person who is injured in an accident site revealing/pronouncing himself as doctor and offer to assist the injured, then a doctor /patient relationship is at once established in implied manner and the doctor is ethically bound and has a duty to exercise reasonable/required standard skill and care in providing medical care possible at that time regardless of whether or not his medical services are being given gratuitously.
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