Improving the accuracy of death certification among secondary care physicians

Abstract EN

Objective : To assess the impact of an educational intervention on the accuracy of death certification of secondary healthcare physicians in Bahrain.

Setting : Secondary Health Care, Ministry of Health.

Design : Interventional study.

Method : Twenty-seven secondary healthcare physicians were invited to attend an interactive workshop about death certificate completion.

They were asked to complete a death certificate based on a Case-scenario at the start and after the end of the workshop.

The errors made by the physicians were compared before and after the intervention.

Result: Five (18.5 %) physicians had some type of training about death certificate completion and 3 (11.1 %) were aware of the death certificate completion guidelines.

A highly significant (p < 0.001) reduction in errors prior to the intervention and after was revealed, 25 (92.6 %) errors versus 11 (40.7 %).

The most frequent error was listing the mechanism but it markedly dropped to one-third following the workshop.

Conclusion: The number of errors has declined after attending the workshop.

Training physicians in death certificate completion would improve the accuracy of mortality statistics.