The slow death of the clinical post-mortem examination: implications for clinical audit, diagnostics and medical education.
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 post-mortem examination, though other factors are also important.
Carr
Urszula
U
Department of Histopathology/Cytopathology, Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital.
Bowker
Lesley
L
Ball
Richard Y
RY
D001344:Autopsy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008485:Medical Audit; D008505:Medical Staff, Hospital; D010819:Physician's Role