Volume 200 - Issue 5
Doctors, death certificates and reporting to coroners — room for improvement
Author: Stephen M Cordner
Med J Aust 2014; 200 (5): 263-264. || doi: 10.5694/mja14.00051
Published online: 17 March 2014
Published online: 17 March 2014
Can our strained forensic pathologist workforce manage a clinically driven increase in reporting?
In reply: One of the issues identified by MacCallum and Anazodo is that a clinically driven increase in reporting deaths to the coroner may further strain an already stretched forensic pathology service.
The inference is that reporting to the coroner is the solution for better understanding deaths where the cause of death is not clear. In circumstances of deaths due to natural causes, Victoria and New South Wales, for example, allow for an autopsy to be undertaken, with the consent of relatives, before the death certificate is completed.1,2 Such an autopsy can be undertaken in the hospital.
If the clinical conclusion is that death was from natural causes but it is not clear what the actual diagnosis was, and the death is not otherwise reportable to the coroner, there could be a hospital autopsy and the certificate completed afterwards. If something is discovered during the autopsy that necessitates report to the coroner (eg, previously unsuspected traumatic lesions), the report could then be made. Hospital processes to implement this would best be developed in consultation with the state coroner and/or the forensic pathology service.
Competing interests
I am director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which is the statutory provider of forensic pathology services in Victoria.