Originally Posted by
slim_slag
However a coronor can only act on the information given to him. If he does want to know more he will genrerally get somebody to call the houseman, and we all know the joke about housemen and mushrooms. More often than not the houseman's bumbling answers will be enough to keep the coronor happy. They missed Shipman for gods sake.
Hmmm.... Post-mortems are not infrequent, and mandatory in the case of unexplained death or misadventure so the pathologist might have something to say. Coroners don't just accept what they're told, otherwise you might as well get one of the seccys to sign people off and as for "..the houseman's bumbling answers" keeping the coroner happy, forget it! Have you ever dealt with the coroners officer?
It may have changed since I practiced in the UK, but the coroners were actually quite strict - you couldn't write "old age" as a cause of death for some 98 year old, you had to write something acceptable - if you couldn't say what exactly your centenarian had died of, it was treated as an unexplained death and there had to be a PM.
"They missed Shipman for gods sake." - Yes, and because of the actions of one unbalanced man old people now have to die in pain (the hospices are full of AIDS and cancer patients) because GPs are now afraid to give then adequate analgesia in case they are accused of killing them.
Bravo!