The forensic medicine education of the practitioners who issue forensic reports in Samsun province and the reflection of this education on the reports

Abstract

The insufficiency in the number of forensic specialists in Turkey and the fact that they are not distributed well-balanced throughout the country, also that students don't have sufficient and equal curriculum in forensic training before graduation leave physicians in difficulty against the judicial cases which they frequently encounter while practicing their professions and cause justice to be revealed wrongly or slowly. In this cross-sectional study, 51 practitioners working in the Forensic Medicine Unit of Health Directorate in Samsun, the 112 First Aid Unit, Emergency Unit of the State Hospital and the SSK Regional Hospital, were interviewed, and their answers to such questions as the forensic medicine training they had had in undergraduate classes, the source of their forensic medicine knowledge and the problems they encounter during professional practices were examined in detail. Thirty-one (60,8%) of the physicians said they had had only theoretical training, 15(29,4%) of them said they had had both theoretical and practical training, 44(86,3%) said they found their forensic training at medical faculties insufficient. The average number of the physicians' reports was 35,6±19,5 per month. 41 (70,6%) said they were doubtful about the accuracy of the forensic reports they issued, 6 (11,8%) said they encountered one or more than one legal problems in the reports they issued so far. To be able to give proper forensic medicine services, an interactive training program which takes the realities of the country into consideration, conforming the purpose and objectives and also equipped with audio-visual aids, both in under graduate curriculum and in postgraduate training needs to be constituted.