Reporting of ‘Unusual Death’ in Patients Undergoing Emergency Abdominal Medicine

Abstract

Unexpected deaths occasionally happen in patients undergoing emergency abdominal medicine. In such cases, it is unclear whether practitioners are obliged to report such deaths to the police in reference to the practitioners' duty to notify instances of any ‘unusual death' to the police under Article 21 of the Medical Act. Disputes have continued among clinicians, researchers in forensic medicine and lawyers, especially about reporting of the death of patients occurring in relation to clinical practice. Medical societies, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, have performed a model project in order to establish a new system to cope with this problem. New legislation has been prepared taking the results of this model project into consideration. Under this legislation practitioners are obliged to give notification of any death of a patient which has incidentally occurred during the clinical course, following which special committees review the clinical courses and results of autopsies. The committees consist of medical professionals, lawyers and others who represent patients in general. Only in patients' deaths which the committee judge as due to grave mistakes would the police be notified, and the application of due criminal process would be considered.