Sudden Death

Have you noticed how many more sudden deaths we are attending nowadays? Every person that dies, has to have a death certificate. This can be done by a GP, if they are certain what the person died of. If not, then the coroner will hold an autopsy. The Police are called out, to act for the coroner, and remove the deceased to the mortuary.

Ever since Harold Shipman, I have been called to far more. It is quite common to get called out to people with a diagnosed terminal illness, who have gone home to die in dignity. Whilst I always try to be as respectful as possible, there is always some resentment that we do things 'our' way.

Now apparently, research has suggested that it would be hard to detect another Shipman.
What a load of old tosh. Even if, you can get a doctor to attend a sudden death, you can guarantee, it wont be the deceased's own GP. No, most of them have opted out of making out of hours home visits (most of the deaths I attend are outside office hours!), leaving the emergency services to pick up the slack. In the unlikely event you do get the GP, they are usually reluctant to sign a death certificate.

So, if you want to see if there is another Shipman out there, just look to see which GP is signing death certificates, 'out of hours'!