DEATH CERTIFICATION - IS CORRECT FORMULATION OF CAUSE OF DEATH RELATED TO SENIORITY OR EXPERIENCE

We looked at a series of death certificates completed by various grade s of hospital clinicians, general practitioners (GPs) and pathologists . Specific error types were defined and identified in each group. In h ospital it is still the pre-registration house officer who completes m ost of the death certificates. Senior hospital doctors make more error s than their juniors while GPs and pathologists make fewest errors. Ev en amongst pathologists 11% of certificates recorded no adequate under lying cause of death, 85.7% failed to record organisms identified and 76.7% failed to record the site or histological type of tumours. This agrees with other studies that show that inaccuracies in death certifi cates arise from inadequate formulation of cause of death and failure to record relevant information. It reveals that little heed has been p aid to the recommendation in the joint report of the Royal College of Physicians and Pathologists that senior doctors should be more involve d in certification-the frequency of errors in this group suggests that it might not, in any case, lead to a great improvement. The number of errors made by GPs and pathologists suggests that even practitioners with clinical experience and regular exposure to certification frequen tly make errors. The reasons for this are discussed and possible solut ions proposed.