The slow death of the clinical post-mortem examination: implications for clinical audit, diagnostics and medical education
Urszula Carr, Lesley Bowker and Richard Y Ball
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.4-5-417
Clin Med September 2004 Urszula Carr
1Department of Histopathology/Cytopathology, Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital
PhDLesley Bowker
2Department of Histopathology/Cytopathology, Medicine for the Elderly, Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital
4School of Biological Sciences and Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia
DM MRCPRichard Y Ball
1Department of Histopathology/Cytopathology, Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital
3School of Biological Sciences and University of East Anglia
MD FRCPathAbstract
The adult clinical post-mortem examination has seriously declined in Norwich recently, with only 34 of them (representing 1.4% of deaths in hospital) having been undertaken in 2003. Moreover, the next-of-kin are increasingly restricting the extent of the examination when they give consent. Analogous but less severe changes have occurred in the post-mortem examination of stillbirths and perinates.
Many clinicians are unaware of these events, which may come to have wide-ranging detrimental effects. One possible cause is the lack of training of junior medical staff in obtaining consent for postmortem examination, though other factors are also important.
- © 2004 Royal College of Physicians
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The slow death of the clinical post-mortem examination: implications for clinical audit, diagnostics and medical education
Urszula Carr, Lesley Bowker, Richard Y Ball
Clinical Medicine Sep 2004, 4 (5) 417-423; DOI: 10.7861/clinmedicine.4-5-417
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