Dr. G Medical Examiner: Working With The Dead

Dr. G Medical Examiner, forensic pathology, death, corpse, morgue, homicide

Everyone has a story to tell; it's my job to find it.

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I’ve never been squeamish with a dead body; I’ve been squeamish with live people. I always had a hard time inflicting pain on people. But no, the dead have never bothered me.

Dr. G from the morgue , Orlando

Date Posted: 11/16/07

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My name is Dr. G and I'm a medical examiner. Growing up, I had traditional Christian views that there’s a heaven and a hell, but I didn’t put much thought into what happens to us after we die. Now that I’ve worked with the dead as a medical examiner, I see these people are obviously missing something. It’s not the same entity that was there when they were alive. There is a soul and it’s a component that is missing after death. It's fascinating to me, and solving the mystery of death is my job.

The new season of Dr. G: Medical Examiner premiers Friday, November 23, at 9 p.m. (ET) on Discovery Health.

When I went into medical school, I knew nothing about forensic pathology; I thought medicine was a noble profession, and I still do. I just got disillusioned and realized it might not be suited to my personality. I loved the workings of the human body, but dealing with a lot of the complaints day in and day out - so many complaints that were related to how people were living their lives - was wearing on me.

I was exposed to forensic pathology at medical school and realized you could still do good in the world in forensics – maybe you couldn’t do anything for that individual person you were examining, but you could do good for family members and society on the whole. I really liked putting the pieces together and being able to use creative thought.

Job Description

My job is investigating anybody that dies unexpectedly, from any type of trauma, or if we just don’t have a clue how they died. All those cases will be investigated by my office. I go about getting the medical record, witness statements, et cetera…ultimately we need a history to establish what has been going on in the person’s life prior to death.

In the morning we go through all the information and decide whether we need an autopsy to determine cause of death and answer many of the questions that could come up.

During the autopsy, I make notes, do an external and an internal examination, tell my investigator what other information I may need, take microscopic slides and materials for toxicology, and finally I come up with a hypothesis of how they died.

If the autopsy can’t answer the question of how they died, we pend it for further testing.