Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Coroner biz is an amalgam...

The Coroner biz is an amalgam of many fields of the arts and sciences. It involves biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, psychology, sociology, logic, criminal and social justice, communication, writing, math, and a bit of philosophy.

Biology and chemistry gives us the ability to do toxicology testing. Physics allows us to look at the mechanics and kinetics of accidents, as well as using parts of the light spectrum and phosphorescence to look for evidence. The mercurial nature of health and illness often impact the deaths under investigation. We learn from psychology and sociology how individuals and groups of individuals act, contributing to death as well as life. Justice is our goal, not in the sense of fault finding, but ensuring the most humane conditions for society. The ability to communicate well, in all its forms, is critical to successful completion of our business. Philosophy is to help us in dealing with it all and in helping the survivors of the deceased individual.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

appreciated!

Having followed your office and blog, clearly preventive medicine and public health can be added to the mix.

MaTuck said...

My son has to do a research paper on what is required education and experience wise to be a Coroner, we have been searching he internet and local websites and can't find any definitive answers. Can you help please , he has to get this finished so he can graduate from high school. He needs to know what type of degree, how many hours, what type of courses and what schools are available in our area which is memphis,Tn. I looked at the UT Medical School website and could not find the information we needed. Thanks so much for your help.

Dr. Richard Keller said...

You might check these other postings on my blog: my first post, this on softer qualifications, this on a death investigator course, and this on other qualifications.
The National Association of Medical Examiners has some stuff on training programs across the country.
Hope that helps.