Death Certification

Trusts should review their contracts of employment, policies and guidance to ensure that, where relevant, they include and are consistent with the duty of candour.

The Department should now institute the office of Independent Medical Examiner to scrutinise those hospital deaths not referred to the Coroner.

Health Boards should ensure that where a death occurs in hospital the consultant in charge of the patients care is involved in completion of the death certificate wherever practicable.

It is of considerable importance that independent medical examiners are independent of the organisation whose patients' deaths are being scrutinised.

National guidance should set out standard methodologies for approaching the certification of the cause of death to ensure, so far as possible, that similar approaches are universal.

It should be a routine part of an independent medical examiners's role to seek out and consider any serious untoward incidents or adverse incident reports relating to the deceased, to …

So far as is practicable, the responsibility for certifying the cause of death should be undertaken and fulfilled by the consultant, or another senior and fully qualified clinician in charge …

Both the bereaved family and the certifying doctor should be asked whether they have any concerns about the death or the circumstances surrounding it, and guidance should be given to …