Audit study of next of kin's satisfaction with clinical necropsy service

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Abstract
We selected 206 consecutive requests for clinical necropsies for inclusion in our study. At least six months (range 6-14 months) after the requests had been made, a specially trained academic psychologist tried to contact the relatives whose consent had been requested. Sixty seven of the relatives were excluded because they could not be contacted, they gave incomplete information, or there were issues of confidentiality or litigation. Of the remaining 139 relatives, 75 participated in the study—31 by the preferred method of personal interview, 31 by postal questionnaire, and 13 by telephone interview. Consent for necropsy had been given by 44 (59%) of the participants and 36 (56%) of the non-responders. Our open ended survey focused on how necropsy requests were made, relatives' reasons for their response, interference with funeral arrangements, and communication of results.

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