Key facts

The specialist in Forensic Medicine must meet the medical-legal needs of the National Health Service; technical collaboration with the administration of justice and with forensic operators for investigations and evaluations that require medical and biological knowledge in relation to particular legal provisions; the medical-legal needs of public and private social security organizations, prison administrations, public bodies, insurance companies and private citizens; the needs related to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of delinquent behavior; the related needs through the knowledge of inconsistencies and errors, to correct the organizational profiles relating to individuals and operating units within the health and/or hospital authorities.

They must have gained theoretical, scientific and professional knowledge in the field of medicine applied to the recognition, definition, assessment, evaluation of individual and collective rights concerning the protection of health, personal freedom, access to sources of economic provision or service provided for in the context of the organization of assistance, social security, public social security or in any case provided for in a supplementary or private way.

He must also be able to obtain a specific professional qualification aimed at satisfying the needs connected, through the knowledge of inconsistencies and errors, to correct the organizational profiles relating to individuals and operating units within the health and/or hospital companies.

The areas of expertise are: medicine of the legal-administrative rights of the citizen, apparently healthy and disabled, and public forensic medicine; bioethics, deontology, professional responsibility; thanatology and medico-legal pathology; social security and insurance medicine; the forensic laboratory; forensic hemogenetics; forensic toxicology; criminology and forensic psychopathology; social medicine and the organization and legislation of health and social interest in the public and private sectors and the assessment methodology for suitable purposes.

Basic learning objectives:

• the acquisition of legislative and jurisprudential tools useful for the appropriate knowledge of the state organization (legislative, administrative, judicial structures and mechanisms), as well as the foundations of constitutional, private, labor, canon and ecclesiastical, criminal, procedural law (civil and criminal);
• the acquisition of the elements of orientation and application in the field of comparative law (private and public);
• the recognition and definition of general problems of medico-legal interest according to methodologically correct terms, with particular reference to the material causal link, the chronological correlation of the different events, the specification of the means and methods of production of the event, the meaning and relative prevalence of human and technical-health behaviour in the production of legally and administratively significant events.

Educational objectives of the type of School:

• the acquisition of the methodological and technical elements for the examination of the corpse (or its remains) with reference to the specification of the time of death, the mechanisms and the lethal means (distinguishing natural death from that from violent causes);
• competence with reference to special autopsy examinations (autopsies on fetuses and newborns; in the case of death from criminal abortion practices; in the case of deaths related to medical-surgical practices; in the case of a corpse subject to transformative phenomena);
• the acquisition of theoretical-practical tools for the assessment and assessment of injuries and impairments of criminal or civil interest;
• the acquisition of the notions and elements useful to satisfy the certification activity in any case requested by the citizen, on a compulsory or free basis, with reference, among other things, to the ascertainment of psycho-physical conditions of state, the request for authorizations, the definition of unsuitability, incapacity, invalidity, incapacity, the recognition of the causal link from facts of service or medical-surgical acts suffered by legal obligation;
• the acquisition of the doctrinal and methodological foundations, as well as the technical elements for the approach and ethical evaluation of health behaviour and events, with particular reference to problems at the beginning and end of life, as well as those inherent to personality;
• the acquisition of property in the domain of interprofessional relations, of relations between professionals and bodies, or individual citizens, as evidenced by the code of ethics, as well as the ability to verify and evaluate the quality and ownership of medical-surgical choices and to evaluate events that may be considered as a source or expression of professional responsibility of the doctor-surgeon (including specialist) and healthcare collaborators, also in relation to specific professional profiles;
• the acquisition of the doctrinal and regulatory foundations (national and international) as well as the application elements for the provision of social insurance benefits (temporary disability; permanent disability; social thermalism; insurance against tuberculosis and old age; right to rehabilitation benefits) in favour of citizens enrolled in public insurance bodies, also with particular reference to those injured at work or suffering from illness PROFESSIONAL;

• the acquisition of the ability to medical-legal management of psycho-physical situations determining civil disability or social disadvantage, in order to correctly ascertain the residual working capacity and the relative individual autonomy of the citizen;
• the acquisition of approach and valuation properties in the various private insurance branches of medical-legal interest (life; accidents; illness; civil liability; supplementary pensions);
• the acquisition of the knowledge bases and application elements for the execution of forensic laboratory investigations with reference to the study and evaluation of histo-pathological preparations, animal remains and traces;
• the acquisition of the basic elements for the orientation of investigations pertaining to criminals, with reference to the places where the crime took place, to the finding, conservation and examination of traces and vulnerable means, including those relating to ballistics;
• the acquisition of the fundamental theoretical and practical knowledge related to haemato-transfusion and organ transplantation activities, as well as the learning of the technical elements useful for identifying diagnostics with regard to gender, species, individuality and for the ascertainment of parental relationships;
• the acquisition of the disciplinary, methodological and technical foundations to deal with forensic investigations applied to different sectors of toxicology: clinical toxicology, analytical toxicology, occupational and environmental toxicology, iatrogenic toxicology, food toxicology, sports toxicology and anti-doping control, toxicology of the abuse of psychoactive substances with particular reference to alcohol and drugs; the student must also acquire the basic technical elements, including analytical ones, for the forensic diagnosis of intoxication (acute and chronic) and poisoning;
• the acquisition of skills for the appropriate ethical-deontological evaluation, according to the good rules of clinical practice, of experimental protocols;
• the learning of the theoretical bases, methodologies, techniques and activities related to general, clinical and juvenile criminology, judicial psychology, forensic psychopathology;
• the acquisition of the knowledge useful for an adequate nosographic placement of the behaviour of the crime and of the victim (including minors), with reference to the general criminological and victimological aspects, to the clinical criminological aspects, including juvenile ones, as well as more specifically psychopathological, with regard to the various general and special regulatory provisions, also relating to the prison organisation;
• the acquisition of any methodology useful for personal identification through haemo-genetic and/or forensic deontological investigation addresses.

Integrated training objectives (i.e. common core): the student must have acquired skills in medical statistics, hygiene, forensic medicine, occupational medicine, epidemiology, business organization, demography, work and organizational psychology, labor law.

The objective of the common training for the disciplines of the class is aimed at acquiring knowledge of the classification and characterization of different population groups, their general and work organization and lifestyles, taking into account the increasingly important psychological implications.

All this is aimed at carrying out adequate statistical evaluations, analysis of hygiene, medico-legal, work and risk problems, recognition of suitability, assessment of pathologies, disability, and application of all preventive criteria as required by current legislation and its evolutions.

The following are similar or supplementary objectives:

the acquisition of the knowledge bases and basic application elements in the field of internal medicine and general surgery, as well as diseases of the respiratory and cardiovascular system, psychiatry, neurology, odontostomatological and visual system diseases, otorhinolaryngology, audiology, diseases of the musculoskeletal system, diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy, gynecology and obstetrics, anesthesiology, occupational medicine, with reference to the fundamentals of physical and instrumental semeiotics and differential nosography useful for the diagnostic definition of injury and impairments in terms of medico-legal significance.

The following are compulsory professionalizing activities for the achievement of the educational purposes of the type:

• participation in at least 5 inspections and/or ascertainments of death, as provided for by the mortuary police regulations or by direct or delegated disposition of the judicial authority;
• have participated in at least 50 necropsy visits with related certification at a municipal morgue or in a hospital and/or territorial setting;
• have participated in at least 100 necropsy examinations completed by the cadaveric section, performing at least 20 of them entirely and personally (external examination, section and determination of the cause(s) of death;
• having participated in at least 2 exhumations of a corpse;
• have participated in at least 30 medico-legal investigations of criminal interest;
• have participated in at least 60 medico-legal investigations of civil interest, of which at least 30 in the field of medical professional liability;
• have participated in at least 30 medico-legal investigations of private insurance interest;
• have participated in at least 30 medico-legal investigations of social insurance interest;
• have attended at least 10 criminal, civil or labour hearings;
• have participated in at least 10 investigations and evaluations on criminological or forensic psychopathology case histories;
• have attended, for at least 2 months, an I.N.P.S. office;
• have attended, for at least 2 months, an I.N.A.I.L. office;
• have participated for at least 2 months in the activities of a Forensic Medicine service in a Local Health Authority, taking part in all the activities carried out in forensic medicine and social medicine;
• have attended a hospital Forensic Medicine service for at least 4 months, taking part in at least 50 consultations and/or investigations of Forensic Medicine (participation in commissions for the ascertainment of death also for transplant purposes; consultations for voluntary interruption of pregnancy, for compulsory health checks or treatments; consultations for the adequacy of information to the patient and for the implementation of the relative act of will; relations with the Court of Rights of the sick, etc.) and participating in all phases of management and definition of health liability cases (including meetings of the management and claims evaluation committees) as well as in clinical risk management, institutional accreditation and quality certification activities;
• have participated in at least 3 mediation and/or conciliation procedures on the subject of medical negligence;
• have participated in at least 5 meetings of the Ethics Committee, following its work from the preliminary phase;
• have participated in the interpretation of at least 80 instrumental investigations of a radiological, ultrasound, electrodiagnostic nature, etc.;
• have participated in at least 100 histopathological investigations;
• have participated in at least 5 investigations on the subject of personal identification.
• have participated in at least 10 toxicological investigations;
• have participated in at least 10 genetic investigations.

Other characterizing activities of the training specialist useful for the acquisition of specific and advanced knowledge in the field of the typology of Forensic Medicine are in the area of:

• Medico-legal pathology and thanatology
• clinical risk
• Bioethics and medical ethics
• MEDICINE AND SURGERY APPLIED TO LEGAL CASES
• forensic laboratory
• Forensic Toxicology and Forensic Biochemistry
• Forensic genetics
• Forensic Radiology
• Criminology and Forensic Psychopathology
• Forensic Entomology
• assessment of personal injury
• specialist outpatient activity
• social medicine
• attendance in national and international centres and/or laboratories with high specific competence.

The student will be able to compete for the diploma after completing the professionalizing activities.