Introduction: The writing of a medical death certificates (MCD) is a medical act that any
physician may have to perform in his daily practice. Medical and legal consequences may
result from the quality of its writing. The objectives of our work were to evaluate the
knowledge and attitudes of physicians concerning the rules of writing MCD in order to
propose corrective measures to the insufficiencies noted.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, over a period of two months (March 1, 2022 to May
1, 2022) among general practitioners and specialists of public health and installed in private in
the region of Tataouine.
Results: During the study period, we designed a questionnaire of 30 items with simple or
multiple choice questions. 34 doctors responded to this questionnaire. 50% of the doctors
received continuing education on the rules for writing MCD. Concerning the administrative
section, 55.9% of the physicians filled in all the boxes concerning the information on the
deceased and 88.2% filled in all the boxes concerning the information identifying the
certifying physician.
Concerning the medical section, the box for medicolegal obstacle to burial was checked in
94.1% of cases. The cause of death was mentioned by 88.2% of the physicians, and the
sequence of causes of death was mentioned in 85.3% of cases. The causal hierarchy was
respected in 73.5% of cases. This medical part, which is confidential, was covered by 82.3%
of the physicians.
Conclusion: Our study showed that the quality of death certificate writing suffered from
several deficiencies, which encourages us to make greater efforts in training doctors.