Background: Prompt and accurate certification of death is essential. This provides legal evidence of the fact and cause(s) of death, thus enabling the death to be formally registered. Death certification also provides data of mortality statistics. These are vital for public health surveillance and for a wide range of research – and thus ultimately for improving the health of the population. METHODS: This is a retrospective, descriptive, cross-sectional study. In this study, all issued death certificates in five private non-teaching hospitals in Davangere, during Jan., 2010 to Dec. 2010 were reviewed. The total 334 death certificates were considered for the study. The rate of documentation and errors were calculated. The questionnaire was designed according to aim of research and reliability was tested with Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87 in a pilot study. RESULTS: The gross errors in writing Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD) were the frequent findings in our study. Out of 334 MCCDs’ evaluated, the name of deceased was not written correctly in 24.25% of cases. The sex and age are the two of the important demographic criteria which were not mentioned in more than 1/3 of cases. The Address of the deceased was not mentioned correctly in 21.84% cases. The date and time of death were not written properly in 17.07% of cases, but they are the very important factors to be mentioned in the cause of death certificate. The doctor’s name was not written in more than 50% of cases. In 66 certificates, the place of death was not mentioned amounting to 19.76% of the total certificates. The Cause of Death was not correctly written in about 75% certificates. Mode of death was wrongly mentioned as cause of death in 35.33% of total cases. CONCLUSION: Evaluation of MCCD’s shows significant number of errors in writing death certificate. The reasons being, low level training and callous attitude of the physicians towards writing death certificates. Training program in death certificate completion by physicians and improvement of diagnostic tests for better documentation are suggested. Physician’s skills in death certificate completion can be improved with an educational intervention. An interactive workshop is a more effective intervention than a printed handout. 

Keywords: Cause of Death, World health organization, medical certification, Autopsy, guidelines, Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD).