Deaths

In the unfortunate event that a patient expires under your care while in the ED, please follow the protocol and make sure the death certificate is signed by your resident at the Admitting Office. The body cannot be released to the family and/or funeral home until this is completed. If your team leaves after your shift and do not do so, this can obviously create an issue.

In the event of a death certificate being un-signed by an ED provider, Admitting will proceed in the following fashion:

1. Contact the primary ED resident. If they are unable to sign in a timely fashion, they can provide information regarding the responsible EM3 and attending, who should be the next contacts, in that order.
2. If the primary ED resident does not respond to admitting, contact the current ED senior resident in the department (x42450 and ask for the ED senior resident) who can relay the information regarding the responsible EM3 and attending, who should be the next contacts, in that order.
3. If all else fails, page the “Emergency Medicine Chief Resident” on-call in the paging directory. There is someone covering that pager 24/7 who can provide the contact info for the responsible EM3 and attending, who should be the next contacts, in that order.