Declan Fox wrote:
> The GMC appears to be referring to Form B here.
> Question 15-----do you feel any doubt whatever as to the character of
> the disease or the cause of death?
>
> Apart from the godawful syntax, it strikes me that post-Shipman it
> would be unwise to write No in reply to this question. Post-Shipman
> there will _always_ be doubt. The wording of this question allows no
> room for manoeuvre, no room for reasonable certainty---the tone is
> absolutist.
>
> The GMC guidance goes---"You should not refuse to sign statutory
> cremation forms on the basis of your own personal or religious
> objection to cremation."
>
> Scratch religious, scratch personal (presumably own morals, ethics,
> value system) and no doubt a good lawyer could argue that refusal to
> sign Form B is mandated by inability to answer No to Q 15. On top of
> which, since the purpose of this form is to assure all concerned that
> death was from natural cases, it seems to me to be asking a bit much
> of the average non-FME GP to fill up this form with the sort of ex
> cathedra certainty that seems to be required. Post-Shipman.
The form completed by the first doctor, the one who wrote the medcial
certificate of cause of death, is, in England, Form B. The second
doctor is invited to complete Form C. The Scots do it differently, and
I'm unsure of the N. Ireland forms.
If the correct answer to any of the questions is not "no" then the only
clearly incorrect thing to write in that box is "no".
Write the argument as above.
The framers of the regulations and designers of the forms might observe
that in 1904 doctors tended to be pretty certain, although they might
occasionally be wrong, but they would also say that when they ask you a
question, nothing they do has ever stopped you from answering it.
I do not believe that a good lawyer would accept money to argue that you
could only sign the form if you answered "no" there, I believe that the
view I set out above would be more likely to be suggested.
If a signed form answered to the best of the doctor's knowledge and
belief is not in fact useful, or does not produce the result someone
else wants, then whatever should change, it does not seem to be the
doctor's answers.
--
A
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