Mine is fresh highschool graduates getting 2 weeks of training to go work acute, all-male forensic psychiatry. We’re taking criminally insane men who are unsafe to put on a unit with criminally insane women.
…and they would send fresh high school graduates (often girls because hospitals in general tend to be female-dominated) in the yoga pants and club makeup they think are proffessional because they literally have 0 previous work experience to sit suicide watch for criminally insane rapists who said they were suicidal because they knew they would send some 18y/o who doesn’t know any better to sit with them. It went about how you would expect the hundreds of times I watched it happen.
My favorite float technician was the 60 year old guy who was super gassy and looked like an off-season Santa. Everybody hated that guy because they said he was super lazy but he would sit suicide watch all fucking shift without complaining and he almost never failed to dissapoint a sex pest who thought they were gonna get some eye candy (or worse).
What’s your example?
Being a coroner in some places. Medical examiners are professionals with a degree (and coroner’s usually are too), but the coroner is often an elected position, and elected positions usually only have residency and age requirements. Coroners have a huge level of power because they get to decide what is and what is not murder. Someone dies in police custody? They can call it natural causes, and it never goes to the court system. A political opponent dies by two gunshots? That can be called a suicide.
My grandmother was the county coroner for a while. She was a pharmacist professionally. In those places, it’s more “give it a quick kick and say they’re dead” (she never did that) more than anything else. She only declared death, not attribute cause to my knowledge.
The other part of it is that, for whatever reason, in my county the only higher arresting authority than the sheriff was the coroner. It was her job to serve him with papers when he was being sued and, not that it ever came up, arrest him when it needed done.
Weird system.
In several states the coroner is also the only authority that can arrest the governor as well. Very strange system.
That sounds like a niche power that’d be fun to try out just to see if it works LOL.
“You’re under arrest, governor!”
“On what charges?!”
“Well you’re in a position of power, giving you probable cause!”
[Finds tons of corruption, unsurprisingly.]
Ah yes like the Boeing employees who shot themselves in the head twice.
I’m a mortician and posted something similar. Morticians go through 4 years of medical school, including pathology and forensics, because it falls on us when the coroner screws up… and they have. The case that hits me the hardest was an infant being given SIDS as the cause of death, but postmortem bruising and broken bones told a different story. The owner had to call police and fake a funeral arrangement while he waited for them to arrive.
Mortuary school is an associate or bachelor level degree. Morticians do not go to medical school
With no disrespect of the mortician above, medical schooling would be the appropriate term. Medical school is generally equivalent to a phd with an internship after.
You’re correct, I should have chosen the words better. I had the same classes as doctors for years and had to compete with them for grades, but my courses veered once the classes went onto curing people. (It’s a bit too late to cure them, by the time they get to us 😅)
After that, was 4 semesters of postmortem science classes revolving around pathology, chemistry, embalming, biohazard protection, forensics, facial reconstruction; and the weird ones like funeral law/insurance, history of death, customs and religions, psychology of death and dying. I love doing reconstructions and creating prosthetics to match a photo when a person is too decomposed or injured. Giving people the chance to say goodbye and have closure is really rewarding.
My university required 2 years of medical courses; as well as 2 years of mortuary science curriculum. Multiple states I’ve worked in require continuing education in the medical field with exams every year. But every state and university is different. When I was stationed and worked in Colorado, I learned you don’t even need a degree to be a mortician. Any person can shadow a Funeral Director and start embalming. That’s terrifying.
I’ll happily concede that things may have changed. I was in college 10 years ago.
Great, you went to college, not medical school. If someone graduated with a bachelor’s degree in anatomy and physiology, they took more medical related classes than you, but still no one would say they went to “medical school.” It’s deliberately misleading and insulting to the people who actually spend over a decade becoming fully-licensed physicians. Not that dissimilar to stolen valor, frankly. Phlebotomists, nurses, etc all take medical classes and actually go on to treat patients medically, but still no one would say they went to medical school. You do a difficult and important job and you have every right to be proud of it, but you have nowhere near the level of medical knowledge or training of someone who went to medical school.
I get what you’re saying, but I respectfully disagree. I don’t think you understand the course load/requirements for this degree. It might be different for different schools, so I’m happy to elaborate. First of, ignore pre-reqs, like math/english/computer/etc. and let’s just talk science. My university was one of the top in the nation and I was required to take the same courses as doctors for years; I had to compete with them for my grades (bell curves suck); the only difference was that my courses changed direction when it got to classes regarding curing/treating people. You don’t need that for a postmortem science degree, so the next 4 semesters went into strictly death related education.
My university had us thoroughly trained on any potential medical risks, biohazards, and hospital procedures. We were dissecting, helping with autopsies, learning forensics and pathology, training in everything regarding the heart and vascular system, and don’t get me started on all the chemistry/physiology… yes, the courses veered, to avoid teaching us how to cure someone, but that does not take away that we go through medical school.
We are trained to be the last line of defense for catching crimes and doctor’s mistakes; we have continuing education alongside doctors, nurses, and pathologists; we have to work with people who’ve died of dangerous diseases and protect the public… we just don’t have to worry about curing a corpse. If you’ve actually read this, please start your reply with the word autopsy.