The death certificate is an important document issued by the medical consultants to certify the death of a person. It is an important document used to register the death of a person to calculate the statistics of total population. The certificate contains the date of death, location of death and causes of the death to enter in the official register. It is a legal document that is produced for the governmental jurisdiction and the purpose of this certificate is to report the actual cause of death either it is due to accident, natural death or murder. The death certificate is required to arrange burial evidences and to collect life insurance of a person.
Time to Issue Death Certificate
The authorities who issue death certificate usually require a certificate from the physicians to validate the original cause of death and to provide identity of the deceased person. The physician thoroughly checks the deceased person to check if the person is really dead or suffering with the brain death. It is the responsibility to physician to promptly check the dead person to trigger the issuance process of death certificate and delay in this process from the side of physician is a crime and the physician can loss his/her practice license. Death certificates may be issued on the orders of court to declare the death of absent person.
Here is preview of this Free Sample Death Certificate Template created using MS Word,
The certificate is often issued on the request of police after the autopsy to verify that the person is not performing foul play. In case of accidental deaths, the survival chances are really less, and in these cases, the death certificate is issued by the police officers. The autopsy is usually performed before issuing death certificate. There are four important items that should be written in the death certificate:
- The immediate reason of death, including heart attack, accident, brain damage, etc.
- The intermediate reasons of death that may strongly be connected to immediate causes, like myocardial infraction
- The underlying causes that may straightly lead to death such as atherosclerosis
- Details of any other diseases, disorders of the person, time of death and other important details
Uses of Death Certificate
- The death certificate helps you to claim benefits of life insurance
- It helps the family members to claim the pensions of deceased person
- It is helpful to settle estates by submitting certain facts about the decedent
- To elaborate the causes and circumstances of death
- Explanation of death place and interment services
- Complete evidence of age, gender and race to avoid potential problems
- Genealogical information
Public Health Uses of Statistical Data
- The death certificate is used to measure the length of expected life and monitor the rate of infant deaths
- It proves helpful to determine the specific incidents and the causes of death
- It helps physicians to control a communicable disease
- It enables concerned authorities to monitor the risk factors that become the reason of premature death
- Helps in the investigation of fatal accidents
- Access ecological and job-related health hazards
Here is download link for this Death Certificate Template,
