key: cord-0917380-8o573ydx
authors: Mungmunpuntipantip, Rujittika; Wiwanitkit, Viroj
title: The workload of a medical examiner service during the COVID-19 pandemic
date: 2022-04-20
journal: Med Sci Law
DOI: 10.1177/00258024221095376
sha: d2ed8f8932a3e1e8c37abb65982852af6800976f
doc_id: 917380
cord_uid: 8o573ydx

nan

We would like to share our thoughts on the publication The workload of a medical examiner service at an acute National Health Service hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital experience. 1 " During the pandemic, medical examiners may have had increased workloads. However, any such increases would generally have depended upon the local policies on medical examination that were applied during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The risk to medical examiners of Covid-19 is well described, 2 and for that reason, some local settings may have introduced policies that were designed to decrease unnecessary examinations. During the peak of the pandemic, the offices of medical examiners faced numerous challenges, including limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE), insufficient storage space for increased numbers of decedents, personnel shortages and burnout, and limited or no engagement at regional or state level for emergency response planning and implementation. 3 Workloads may also have varied during the different stage of the outbreak and the corresponding lockdown policies. It would interesting to further assess the inter-relationship between workload at different periods of the pandemic with different backgrounds as regards stages of the pandemic and associated lockdown policies.

The workload of a medical examiner service at an acute National Health Service hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital experience

COVID-19 in forensic medicine unit personnel: observation from Thailand

Reducing occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2: a survey of changes in caseload and controls among medical examiner and coroners' offices in Pennsylvania during 2020

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Rujittika Mungmunpuntipantip https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0078-7897