Medicine, science, and the law
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This paper describes an audit of the basic standard of record keeping for inpatient clinical records. Following an initial audit, the Royal College of Physicians' inpatient record keeping standards 6 and 7 were adopted. ⋯ A significant improvement was achieved in many areas including recording of time (19-82%), name of author (60-89%), location of patient (58-94%) and identity of the most senior doctor present (68-89%), (p<0.001). The Royal College of Physicians' record keeping standards through the use of audit can lead to considerable improvement in the standard of record keeping within psychiatric practice.
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Differentiation between suicide and homicide can be problematic for forensic pathologists, especially when a complex method of suicide is used by the victim. Multiple gunshot suicides have been previously reported in the forensic literature. ⋯ The autopsy showed that both gunshot wounds were nonlethal and the cause of death was attributed to drowning. Though homicide was strongly suspected at first, the manner of death was later established as suicide.