Initial Medical Certificate: survey of post graduate students in dentistry

The initial medical certificate (IMC) is the first document delivered to an injured person, or his or her legal representative. The objective of this study was to determine the knowledge and writing habits of Tunisian dental post-graduate students regarding the IMC.

This was a descriptive study conducted at the Faculty of Dentistry of Monastir (Tunisia) during the period from October 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019. All the post graduate students were included in the survey. For data collection, a questionnaire written in French was used. The platform "Google Forms" was used to perform the questionnaire and the link was sent by mail to all participants.

For 19.9% of respondents , the IMC was considered as an expertise and 22% of them declared that even non-graduates can deliver it. In addition, 22% of participants have already given a IMC to a third party and 12.2% have reported photos and X-rays to the IMC. On the other hand, 82.4% of respondents do not indicate total incapacity for work (TIW) when writing the IMC. In fact, 13.7% of them do not know what a TIW is and 52.1% think that it will be determined during the expertise. Finally, 85.6% of respondents estimated that they did not have the necessary information about the IMC and 96.9% of them thought that an information support would be useful to help them in writing it.

The writing of IMC incurs the criminal, civil and ethical responsibility of the practitioner.