Relatives to be told if organs are retained after postmortem

The way in which hospital staff obtain informed consent for postmortem examinations is to be changed to provide more openness and clarity. The changes follow recent events at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in which parents were shocked to find that organs from their children had been retained after postmortem examination without any consultation.

Guidelines from the Royal College of Pathologists, published this week, call for better training of the staff who have the difficult task of asking relatives to agree to postmortem examinations. They state that it should be made …