Reporting deaths of all children

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 50, No. 2, March 2008, Page 71 News

A recent change to the Coroners Act (26 September 2007) requires that all child deaths are reported. This means that if you attend the death of a child (anyone less than 19 years of age), or attend the child during the child’s last illness, you must immediately report it to the BC Coroners Service. The death of a child who dies unexpect­edly and/or of unnatural causes must immediately be reported to the on-duty coroner by speaking to him or her directly. 

Natural, expected deaths must also be reported to the on-duty coroner. Natural, expected deaths that occur at BC Children’s Hospital can be reported directly to Ms Narin­der Johal, pediatric medical investigator at the Office of the Chief Coroner. Ms Johal can be reached at 604 660-7725 or at 604 290-6661.

If you have any questions, please contact Ms Narinder Johal or Ms Beth Larcombe at the Office of the Chief Coroner, at 604 660-7745 or check the web site at www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/coroners.

Regional coroner offices

Vancouver Metro Regional Coroner’s Office:
604 660-7708
Fraser Regional Coroner’s Office:
604 930-7134
Island Regional Coroner’s Office:
250 952-4150
Interior Regional Coroner’s Office:
250 861-7429
Northern Regional Coroner’s Office:
250 565-6040

. Reporting deaths of all children. BCMJ, Vol. 50, No. 2, March, 2008, Page(s) 71 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply