Title

Role of Checklists in Medicolegal Death Investigation.

Authors

Arthy Amarnath, Sitalal Narayan Rathod, Rohit Goel

Abstract

Introduction: The essential element of criminal law mandates the offense to be proved beyond reasonable doubt by prosecution and law enforcement. The key approach is to not leave any stone unturned. Investigating agencies and forensic personnel need practice advancement- adopting modern and effective modalities. Although technological advancement is being considered as the mainstay of improvement, it is not the only area. Medicolegal Aspects: The overall conviction rate of a country requires upgrading the quality of work of investigating teams handling cases. As is true for all complex processes handled by teams, criminal investigations, and medicolegal autopsies are also prone to human errors at multiple stages. Hence, it is necessary to adopt methods for the improvement of teamwork. One accepted method is the usage of checklists. Here, we discuss the need for checklists in medicolegal death investigations, their utility of different types of checklists in various situations, and provide an example checklist for hanging. Conclusion: The introduction of checklists has been found to improve the work standards in high-reliability organizations such as aviation, and nuclear power plants. World Health Organization has recommended checklists in the operation rooms and areas affecting patient safety.

Keywords

Checklists, Medicolegal Investigation, Death investigation, Medicolegal Autopsy.