Not his job to speculate. . . [/quote]
Ha! Too late. JamesE already pointed out that coroners DO produce the report which I claim they don’t produce, and my example >indicates< that I was aware of that.
I win. :discodance:
I’ve read what the nerd and the nurse have to say about this, and I’m with the lawyer on this one.
If a plant dies because it is never watered, you can say that the immediate cause of death is water starvation. But water starvation is caused by the gardener not doing his job. So ultimately, the death was caused by negligence. Root cause and immediate cause are not the same thing, and the coroner is only expected to deliver his findings regarding the immediate cause of death.
What MT has to understand, however, is that without sufficient evidence that rules out any and all doubts, a coroner can not speculate on the root cause in his report, even if it appears pretty obvious. He has to limit his report to the immediate cause of death.
Not sure this is going to sway anyone’s opinion, but to clarify:
death certificate typically requires fairly concrete information as filled out on standardized form (fill out blanks, check boxes), including time and date of death. Disposition of remains. Some of these may be filled out by the funeral home, the certifying doctor fills out the immediate cause of death (e.g. pulmonary embolism or pneumonia, or lung cancer), approx. interval since onset, and preceding causes, their approx intervals (example: immediate cause of death: variceal bleed (minutes) due to portal hypertension (8 years) due to liver cirrhosis( 9 years). Usually there is a separate section to state any factor contributing to but not the immediate cause of death. (you might put alcohol abuse in this section, using the above example)
Manner of death is where the death is classified as natural, accident, homicide, suicide, or unknown (these are boxes to check, cannot make up your own) OD and motor vehicle accidents are accidental, pneumonia is natural, and even bleeding from esophageal vessels due to alcoholic liver disease, as the example above is considered natural). another box to check: if tobacco contributed to death ( yes, no, probably, unknown). Another few boxes to check including if a female was pregnant at the time of death, and if death is due to injury, whether injury occurred at work .
Autopsy reports are different documents and these are prepared by pathologists or medical examiners who may not be the doctor signing the death certificate, these are more in depth, but again, needs concrete medical evidence from anatomic observations (occluded coronary arteries) and toxicology reports (lethal blood levels of drugs etc). to document weakened immune system is difficult (need fairly solid evidence like decreased blood levels of immunoglobulins). As pointed out earlier pneumonia can take down a perfectly healthy young person, sometimes quickly-happens yearly on college campuses.
That’s probably more than anyone ever wants to know, but please, lawyers don’t always practice medicine better than doctors.