Handling of Medicolegal Cases by Doctors in Imphal West

In medical practice, most of the doctors would come across medico-legal cases (MLc). A cross sectional study was conducted over a period of 6 months on doctors posted in different health centres and hospitals of the Imphal West district of Manipur to assess the level of awareness of management of medicolegal cases.

The data were collected from consenting participant doctors posted at different health centres of the Imphal West district by interviewers using pretested questionnaires. They were asked certain questions related to the management of medicolegal cases. The awareness status was grouped under three categories like ‘aware’ (score >10 points), ‘partly aware’ (score >5 to 10 points), ‘unaware’ (score 0 to 5 points). The answers were recorded and statistically analysed.

A total of 126 participants took part in this study and on overall assessment of awareness, it was observed that 74.6% of them were partly aware and 7.94% were unaware of the handling of medicolegal cases. Amongst the participants, 19.84% did not know what constitutes a medicolegal case. It was also observed that 61.11% of the participants did not know whether death certificate should be issued or not in these cases. Only 30.95% of the doctors were aware of the samples required to be collected in sexual assault cases, and 54.76% were partly aware of it. Most of the participants (83.33%) were unaware of the maintenance of chain of custody of evidence.

Awareness level and problems faced by doctors in handling medicolegal cases can be established up to some extent from this study. There is a need to educate the doctors to improve the handling of such medicolegal cases, which will be of benefit to all the doctors as well as to the society in general.