Attitudes of Nursing Staff in North-Eastern Area to the Forensic Autopsy

Abstract

Background and objective : Because of the law, the forensic  autopsy  at scene  with  the  police is one career of nurses. However, there is no study that investigates the attitude of nurses who worked in the hospital at North-Eastern path of Thailand on the forensic autopsy.

Methods: A quantitative exploratory descriptive survey using a questionnaire was carried out  with 84 nurses who attended on the  short  course  training of forensic medicine from  18-19  August 2011. Calculated  by SPSS version 17.0.

Results: 33.3 % of nurses had a chance to perform investigation at the dead scene.  The most forensic autopsy cases which performed by nurses are unexplained death (35.7%). Nurses have confidence at highest levels in the case of traffic accident (85.6%). The majority of nurses required the payment for medico-legal dead case investigation (83.3%), while 46.4% nurses disagreed about emergency nursing should be a first person who will take the responsibility on this works. In addition, the common risk  factors  of nurses are safety (84.5%) and the best solution when nurses have problem is consulting with  doctor (90.5%).

Conclusions: Nurses have the different attitudes and experiences in the medico-legal dead case investigation  at scene  with  the  police. The most problem due to unskilled nurses in forensic  autopsy. So medico-legal dead case investigation is not  appropriated with nursing.

Keywords : attitudes of nursing     forensic autopsy     dead case investigation