Uniform guidelines for postmortem work in India: Faculty development on Standard Operative Procedures (SOP) in forensic medicine and toxicology Murty O.P.1, Kohli Anil2, Millo Tabin1, Rani Mukta3, Verma SK2, Sikary Asit K1, Girdhar Shalini3, Sharma SK4, Banerjee KK2, Kumar P Sampath5 1Additional Professor, Additional Professor, Senior Demonstrator, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi 110029 2Reader, Professor, Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi-110095 3Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Lady Harding Medical College, New Delhi-110001 4Assistant Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Army College of Medical Sciences, Delhi Cantt, New Delhi 5Professor and Head, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Sri Ram Chandra Institute of Medical Sciences, Porur, Chennai, Tamil Naidu *Correspondence: Dr. O P Murty, Additional Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi-110029. Email: dropmurty@yahoo.co.in, Phone 0091 9868397155/91 11 26593274
Online published on 29 April, 2015. Abstract Skill-based forensic training has become necessity of the world to increase the practice of evidence based forensic practice. Unfortunately, many criminals are let off due to improper reporting of findings and defective workout of cases at their first contact in the hospitals and autopsy centers. In India, there are about 358 medical colleges and their training standards are different from college to college. This varied standards have created a serious gap in the forensic knowledge and practice and reasons are conflicting resource material, teaching methods, faculty development and their proper training, unplanned training of faculty, arbitrariness in the subject coverage, pattern of assessment of trainees and trainees, inadequate human resource, poorly equipped working stations and infrastructure available. To combat this deficiency a step is being taken by us to train forensic professionals and organize skill-based training of faculty. This program has been termed as “ Faculty Development Training Workshops on Standard Operative Procedures (SOP) for Medico-Legal Work and Modular Teaching in Forensic Medicine and Toxicology”. This will help forensic practitioners in recording objective findings and observations in more transparent and authentic manner. Thus, this practice will indirectly help administrative and judicial outcomes in criminal cases where forensic evidence matters. We started this training in May, 2012 in phase wise manner. This training and Forensic faculty development is aimed to add more skills among professionals to meet expectations of society and law. To meet these challenges, team of trained professionals are being created through these training workshops. This faculty development programme covers professional, technical, personal and social aspects of faculty growth. Such programs are likely to produce quality forensic services. This training will help them to provide quality services and teaching. This goal will be achieved through multiple training workshops on modular teaching and Standard Operative Procedures with the help of National resource faculty pooled from different medical colleges. These workshops have Leading presentations, key-demonstrations, group discussion, hands-on exercises and sharing of experiences. There is overall shortage of trained professionals in this region, so opportunities to obtain training at low cost in home country are created through these training workshops, conferences and sharing experiences. We intend to make these modules available to different institutions on non-commercial basis. In this document on SOP, we have tried to give brief account of all common situations faced by a general forensic practitioner in day to day practice in a simplified way. We will make efforts to make these SOP available to all practitioners in the field through all other possible means through national bodies. Top Keywords SOP, Minimum guidelines for postmortem work, Autopsy Standards, Standard Operative Procedures for Postmortem Work, Postmortem Protocols, Autopsy Protocols, Indian forensic medicine. Top |