Nihon hōigaku zasshi = The Japanese journal of legal medicine
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Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi · Nov 2000
[Survey on postmortem examination to police surgeons and emergency physicians. Possibility of physicians' assist in mass-disaster].
We conducted a questionnaire survey of police surgeons and emergency physicians, inquiring about their experience of medicolegal investigation of death and their willingness to join a death investigation team in a major disaster. The questionnaire also asked about their knowledge about and interest in the forensic specialist system established by the Japanese Society of Legal Medicine. Police surgeons were generally willing to join an investigation team only if a disaster occurred in or close to their hometown, because they could not afford more than several days away from patient care. ⋯ Therefore, it is urgently necessary to establish a system of training resident and emergency physicians in medicolegal investigation of death. In addition to providing postgraduate training in medicolegal investigation of death to prospective trainees who are emergency physicians at major hospitals in potential disaster-stricken areas, the medical school should incorporate forensic medicine in postgraduate training programs so that they can actively perform death investigation on disaster victims dying before or after arrival at their hospitals. Furthermore, the forensic community should make every effort to increase the number of autopsies in each department of forensic medicine and to expand the medical examiner system throughout Japan that is currently in practice only in the Metropolis of Tokyo and Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe Cities in order to incorporate forensic training in the postgraduate clinical training programs that will become compulsory in 2004.