Texto III

Careers in forensic and legal medicine

Forensic medicine is often seen as a glamorous yet morbid field of work, a myth perpetuated by televison stars like the notorious Quincy, ME. But it's not all solving crimes and post mortems. Richard Jones and Roy Palmer describle the different career opportunities that bring the law and medicine together.

A forensic practilioner is someone who provides evidence for court proceedings (the word "forensic" is from the Latin "forensis" a court or forum). Practicing clinicians working mainly in clinical medicine may occasonally find themseives giving professional evidence of fact, or expert opinion reports, in personal injury (including medical negligence) claims other civil cases (for example, family law cases), in criminal courts, or the coroner. Some careers, however, allow a practitioner to spend more of their time dealing with medicolegal matters.

Forensic pathology

Perhaps the most instatly recognizable forensic medical practitioner is the forensic pathologist. Forensic pathology is a subspeciality of histopathology and morbid anatomy. The modern forensic pathologist spends much of his or her time carrying out "routine" autopsies for the coroner, to determine the cause in cases of sudden, violent, or unexpected death. Most of these deaths are due to natural causes — for example, severe coronary artery disease, intracranial haemorrhages, or ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms.

The forensics pathologist comes into his or her own with cases that are suspicious, or where criminal actions are evident. In large cities, there are several full time practitioners, in the regions there may be those who work primarily as clinicians, on a retainer with the local constabulary to be avaliable at the scene of a suspicious death at any time.

Practing forensic pathologists will fell you the variety of work is wide. A word of caution though: there is an awful lot of legal report writing and numerous court appearances. The budding forensic pathologist should, therefore, enjoy the details of each case and explaning these details and their implications to a varied audience: the public, barristers, families, judges, and the investigating police officers will all be listening. Further details about the training path towards forensic pathology can be obtained from the Royal College of Pathologists (www.rcpath.org). Potencial changes to the coroner's system may open up further career opportunities in forensic pathology.

Other careers in legal medicine

Careers in the legal system that benefit from a medical backgroud have been covered before by studentBMJ and will be updated again soon. These include working as a lawyer specializing in medical negligence claims, or for a medical defense organization advising doctors on medicolegal aspects of their clinical practice. Academic positions that combine medical knowfedge with the law, or with the legal and ethical issues of medical pratice, are also avaliable.

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Acesso em 16/2/2008.

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