In criminal law, subjective and objective criteria are of importance criteria for establishing of criminal responsibility. Subjective criterion of establishing of criminal responsibility only focuses on wrongdoer, his personal characteristics and his mental state. In contrast, objective criterion of criminal responsibility regardless of perpetrator characteristics and his point of view focuses on comparison of perpetrator with a reasonable person in his situation.

The question is that. In medical negligence should this criterion be objective or subjective? Studies in Iranian and other legal systems show that the dominant criterion must be objective. In other word, if the physicians’ behavior is lower than conduct standards of a reasonable physician in the same conditions, he is negligent, whether he personally has done his best maximum effort or not.