You are here

Article Text

Article menu

other Versions

Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
‘Declaring’
  1. Jonathan White
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jonathan White, Associate Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Alberta, Room 409 Community Services Centre, Royal Alexandra Hospital, 10240 Kingsway, Edmonton AB T5H 3V9, Canada; jswhite1{at}ualberta.ca

https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2011-010060

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    The nurse stops me as I'm on my way past the desk: “Doctor, thank goodness you're here! Your patient Mr Jones passed away a while ago. Can you declare him?” Hmmm. Mr Jones, 90-something years old; I operated on him a few days ago, but post-op he kind of gave up the ghost. I had been expecting him to go downhill, but I hadn't actually heard he had died.

    On the walk to the room it occurs to me, I haven't done this for a very long time. At least 10 years. I mean, when does a consultant surgeon ever have to declare one of his patients dead? It's a task usually done by those on …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.