AMBULANCE DUTY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 157, 29 March 1941, Page 9

AMBULANCE DUTY

Cases Where Death Has Occurred CORONER’S INSTRUCTION The duty of au officer of the Free Ambulance on arriving at an objective and finding the patient dead was stated in a letter from the coroner, Mr. W. G. Mellish, read at Thursday’s meeting of the Wellington Free Ambulance Board. The letter stated that the coroner had been informed that a practice had grown up of persons requesting the attendance of an ambulaice in cases where death has then actually occurred. He was informed that in some such cases the ambulance driver had been asked to remove the body and had done so, usually bringing it to Taranaki Street Police Station for its admission to the public morgue. The first the police knew of the death was then, when the body arrived at the police station. This practice was wrong. In such cases the body must not be removed without the permission of the’police who would be instructed by the coroner. The coroner stressed the danger of the loss of valuable evidence by the :- moval of a body before observations were made by the police at the spot. Where death might be considered imminent, but the removal to hospital of the person concerned might result in the saving of his life, he did not suggest that the removal should not be effected at once.: ? It was reported that the superintendent, Mr. F. Iloffe, had issued an instruction to the staff along the lines of the coroner’s advice. The chairman, Sir Charles Norwood, said that in the nature of the service the ambulance offered they wished to avoid carrying dead bodies. That was entirely outside their functions. “In the event of such a case in the Upper Hutt, you might have to wait an hour for a policeman,” said Mr. A. J. McCurdy. There was an instance of a woman drowned in the Hutt River not long ago when a mortuary van was sent out from Wellington.

Mr. Roffe’s reply to the coroner’s letter was approved.