§ 8.01-401.2.Chiropractor, physician assistant, advanced practice registered nurse, or optometrist as expert witness.

Expert testimony in a personal injury or malpractice case usually calls to mind a medical doctor, but Virginia recognizes that other licensed healing professions have expertise worth putting before a jury. Section 8.01-401.2 gives chiropractors, physician assistants, advanced practice registered nurses, and optometrists a defined lane to testify as experts — covering etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, treatment plans, and disability, including the anatomical, physiological, and pathological issues that come with those topics — as long as the testimony stays within the scope of practice their license authorizes.

The section draws a firm boundary around physician assistants and advanced practice registered nurses specifically. Even though they can testify generally within their scope, neither one may serve as an expert witness for or against a defendant doctor of medicine or osteopathic medicine on the medical standard of care in a malpractice action, and neither may testify on causation for or against any defendant healthcare provider in a malpractice case. Those two issues — standard of care for physicians and causation in malpractice suits — stay reserved for other qualified experts.

Chiropractors and optometrists face no equivalent carve-out in this section; their expert testimony authority tracks the full scope of their licensed practice under the chiropractic and optometry statutes referenced here.