CSI strikes again

I just read Greg's blog and comments about his passing the funeral director exam and it reminded me of an incident in the ER a few weeks ago.

We had a patient brought in with a gun shot to the head. When the paramedics brought this person in they informed us that there was no gun found at the scene. By the way she was DOS (dead on scene) but the brought the pt in anyway. Another RN and myself let the CSI kick in and we started questioning why was this person moved from the scene, wasn't that tampering with evidence. The coroner was called and when he came, he pronounced this a suicide. Boy that really kicked in the CSI mentality. We were all over him. How could he tell this without taking her to the lab and do all that stuff they do. Was he going to dust the person's hands for gunshot residue to see if it was truly done by self or someone else, since it would be extremely hard to shoot ones self in the head and then dispose of the gun. Where was the entrance wound, it the wound we had examined was the exit wound and there was no visible evidence of another wound. We put him through the ringer.

Long and short of it, we were put in our place by the coroner. But, we weren't satisfied with his answers and we will continue to watch CSI.