Consistent acting, legal knowledge and competence of external postmortem examination in Dutch hospital settings

A crucial role in the external postmortem examination system of the Netherlands is that of the attending physicians, who are either general practitioners or physicians in hospitals. They perform 85% of all external postmortem examinations and must immediately report to forensic physicians all unnatural deaths and deaths that they are not convinced to be natural. These attending physicians need therefore to be properly qualified and need to be competent, by acting consistently and by having knowledge of the appropriate laws surrounding external postmortem examination. The aim of this study is t... Mehr ...