Assessment of Practice on Maintenance of Records for Death Case in Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.

Abstract

Background: Increased life expectancy is a good indicator of developed country. Though death is inevitable, it is the final assessment tool for assessment of standards of medical service. Correctly fill-up death certificate is an important document for the family, society and for the country. For this reason, WHO introduces International Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD), which can be modified by different countries according to their needs. Our study aims to assess how correctly our doctors are filling up the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) in our hospitals. Methods: It is an observational study took place between December’2023 to May’2024 in Department of Medicine, Rajshahi Medical College Hospital. Death certificates were issued from medicine department of Rajshahi Medical college Hospital during this study period were assessed by a data collection from which is based on death assessment tool. Results: We have included a total number of 1215 filled up death certificates in our study. Among them 97.40% had at least one error, 32.90% had multiple causes per line, time interval between onset to death was blank in 97.30%, 61.60% had no sequence in chain of events, Illegible hand writing in 15%, Abbreviation used in 56%, Incorrect sequence of events leading to death in 81.73%, Ill-defined condition as underlying COD in 80.70% case of death certificate according to death assessment tool introduced by WHO in 2016. Conclusions: Most of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) issuing from our hospitals were not up to the mark and contain multiple errors. A correctly fill up death certificate gives us valuable data for current hospital management. To reduce errors in death certificate, regular training of the involved doctors, periodic monitoring of death certificates is needed.