awareness of physicians about lawful death certification forms in hospitals of zanjan university of medical sciences -1390

introduction: reliable information about death causes mentioned in death certificate, is one of the basic resources for fundamental researches, epidemiological studies, public health services programming and the way of resource allocation in all countries. so, it seems, that is necessary for physicians to have enough knowledge and understandig in how to issue a death certificate. methods: this study is descriptive cross sectional survey of all the physicians who were working in hospitals of zanjan university of medical sciences. data gathering tools: a two-part questionnaire containing demographic information and 25 questions about permissible and impermissible cases of issuing death certificate has been used. achieving 18 to 25 marks in questionaire is a good mark. the spss 16 statistical software were used in data analysis. results: 192 physicaions including 63 female and 129 male. were studied in this study. in 180 (93.8 %) of cases knowledge was sufficient in 10 of then level of knowledge was moderete, and in others was low differences based on sex way significaut (p < 0/05) conclusion: the results suggest that most of the physicians are completely and sufficiently knowledgeable about identification of death cases which are premisive to issue death certificate. and that only in cases such as aging , heart attack, stroke, unexpected events, death in sanatorium, and kidney failure instead of referring the case to the coroner, the death certificate would be issued. it is suggested that in retraining courses these cases are to be pointed out. keywords: death certificate, physicians, aging, heart attack, stroke, unexpected events, sanatorium, kidney failure.