title: Incorrect death certification. An invitation to obfuscation.
abstract: The physician responsible for signing a death certificate has an obligation to complete the medical part of the form, which includes entering the cause of death. In a review of 384 death certificates signed by house staff and attending physicians at a university hospital over a one-year period, 59% contained errors in cause-of-death entries. The most common error was listing mechanisms rather than causes of death. Since death certificates are used in calculating basic mortality statistics, such a large percentage of error can lead to considerable statistical misinformation.
mesh_terms: D003643:Death; D003644:Death Certificates / Q000592:standards*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D009820:Ohio; D013223:Statistics as Topic