Mortuary staff should be rotated to other posts on a regular basis to make their jobs less mundane and cut down on the chances of blunders occurring, an industry reviewer said.
Concerns over the workload and service quality of mortuary staff were highlighted once again this week when the body of a 77-year-old woman was subjected to an unnecessary autopsy due to a chain of administrative errors by staff at Fu Shan Public Mortuary.
Government officials said a series of mortuary mishaps in recent years were not due to staff shortages and that workloads were appropriate. According to the Department of Health, 19 staff members at Fu Shan mortuary were responsible for dealing with about 3,000 bodies a year, which means two staff members deal with a body per day on average. The mortuary employs 10 attendants, a technician, two officers, two doctors, three senior doctors and a consultant doctor. Of the 3,000 bodies, only about half require post-mortem examinations, according to government data.
Aaron Wan Chi-keung, the convenor of a committee set up to investigate a body mix-up at Fu Shan Public Mortuary in 2006, said although mortuary jobs were 'obviously mundane and boring', that was not an excuse for making mistakes.
'Mortuary jobs are simple and require minimal skills. As long as one's heart is in the job, there is no reason to commit any mistakes,' he said.
While workers should change their attitude, administrators should also think about how they could make the job less boring.