Death notification after a motor vehicle collision: is there a ‘best’ time to tell the survivors?

Telling survivors of a motor vehicle collision (MVC) that someone else has died in that incident is a sensitive undertaking for health professionals. The paper highlights that there is no consensus in the literature as to the best timing to deliver this potentially upsetting news, or even whether it should happen at all in the early stages of the survivors’ management and treatment, especially if they do not ask for this information.

This study set out to examine the views of survivors of severe MVCs to try and find out more about their preferences as to when and where they would like to find out about any fatalities involved in the incident.

Between May and August 2010, patients who had been involved in a MVC between 2005 and 2009 in Ohio were approached to participate in a telephone survey. Participants were identified by using the University of Toledo Medical Center’s (Level 1 Trauma Centre) Institutional Trauma Registry Database.