[What are the obstacles to drawing up a death certificate in a home setting ? A survey of doctors in Normandy].

INTRODUCTION: Drafting a death certificate is an obligation for any physician called upon to note a death. It has a legal and epidemiological impact. The objective of this study is to highlight the obstacles encountered by professionals when this process takes place in a home setting.

METHOD: A study was carried out by means of a questionnaire sent to doctors in the Normandy region.

RESULTS: One fifth (20%) of the general practitioners (GPs), 25% of the SAMU practitioners (intervening in mobile emergency throughout the country), 27.3% of SOS doctors (intervening 24 hours a day in the deceased person's home in the absence of a GP) stated that they had at least once refused to establish a death certificate. Only 36.4% of SOS doctors, 62.5% of emergency physicians and 41% of GPs considered the drafting of a death certificate to be one of their mandatory missions. No less than 17% of GPs, 25% of SAMU doctors and 9% of SOS doctors stated that due to lack of time, they were occasionally unable to travel to fill out a death certificate, a factor causing delays that were detrimental, especially for the surviving relatives. We highlighted several other obstacles to the completion of death certificates: the difficulty of completing them accurately without knowledge of the deceased person's history, possible inability of professionals on tight schedules to deal with unforeseen requests and, more rarely, the issues raised by an absence of remuneration.

CONCLUSION: Our study highlights major obstacles in the preparation of death certificates, obstacles that should be taken into consideration insofar as they affect the quality of the data collected, and entail ethical challenges.