ABSTRACT
The requirement that a physician pronounce death stems from the fact that it is often difficult to determine if, or to be sure that, a person is dead. This fact accounts for the horror stories we occasionally hear about people “waking up” in body bags or at the morgue, or being left for dead only to survive. Physician involvement also causes some logistic problems because a physician is not always available at the place where death occurs. As a result it is sometimes necessary for a dead body to be transported to a nearby emergency room, where a physician can pronounce death. As you can imagine, such transport takes time and may delay the delivery of a body to the funeral home, medical examiner’s office, or other location. Of course if a physician medical examiner or coroner is at the death scene, that person might pronounce death.
