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Yoon, Kim, and Lee: Analysis of Death Certificate Errors of a University Hospital Emergency Room
Original Article

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 2017; 41(3): 61-66.

Published online: 31 August 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7580/kjlm.2017.41.3.61

Analysis of Death Certificate Errors of a University Hospital Emergency Room

Sung-Hee Yoon1, Ran Kim2, Choong-Sik Lee3

1Department of Scientific Criminal Investigation, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea.

2Department of Nursing, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea.

3Department of Forensic Medicine, Chungnam National University College of Medicine, Daejeon, Korea.

Correspondence to: Choong-Sik Lee. Department of Forensic Medicine, Chungnam National University College of Medicine, 266 Munhwaro, Jung-gu, Daejeon 35015, Korea. Tel: +82-42-580-8235, Fax: +82-42-280-7189, cslee@cnu.ac.kr

Received 7 August 2017       Revised 10 August 2017       Accepted 23 August 2017

© Copyright 2017 by the Korean Society for Legal Medicine

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the errors and their causes in inappropriately completed death certificates, and to suggest improvement measures. The death certificate is an important medical document that proves the cause and manner of death. However, a death certificate is not as valuable as a medical document, since many death certificates are inappropriately completed and thus provide inaccurate information. We reviewed 307 death certificates issued by the Emergency Room of Chung Nam National University Hospital between January 1, 2015, and November 31, 2016, and compared their details with the cause and manner of death in the patients' medical records. Among various errors, the most common was “omission of other significant information not related to the cause of death” (184 cases). On 29 death certificates, the mechanism of death was recorded instead of the cause of death. When comparing death certificates and medical records, discrepancies in the cause and manner of death were found in 13 (4.2%) and 17 (5.5%) cases respectively. Although the contents of a death certificate may vary according to a physician's point of view, multiple errors on death certificates should be avoided, and we suggest necessary improvement measures.

Keywords: Death certificates, Cause of death

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Classification of manner of death by sex

kjlm-41-61-i001

Values are presented as number (%).

Table 2

Classification of unnatural death by intentionality

kjlm-41-61-i002

Values are presented as number (%).

Table 3

Classification of unnatural death by accidents

kjlm-41-61-i003

Values are presented as number (%).

Table 4

Errors of cause of death in the death certificates

kjlm-41-61-i004

COD, cause of death.

Table 5

Causes of death alone without underlying cause

kjlm-41-61-i005
Table 6

Error analysis of cause of death and manner of death

kjlm-41-61-i006

Values are presented as number (%).

COD, cause of death; DC, death certificate; MOD, manner of death.

Notes

Conflicts of Interest No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

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