Objective: This study was carried out to investigate the causes of death written in death certificates with their compliance with the World Health Organization’s criteria and the factors that affect them.

MaterialandMethod:Forthisdescriptive,cross-sectional study using the record scanning method, a sample was not determined. All the 1656 death documents constituting the universe that were filled in for people who died in Niğde Province in the year 2015 were included in the study. The causes of death in documents without International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 were converted to the appropriate code and calculations then were made on the data. Necessary permissions were obtained for the study.

Results: In 44.7% of death documents, the causes of death were written without using ICD-10 coding. The most common main causes of death were circulatory system diseases (45.4%), respiratory system diseases (14.4%) and neoplasms (10.3%). While 18.1% of causes of death were ill defined, 62.3% of them were diagnoses of the circulatory system. Nearly half of the unacceptable diagnoses (47.6%) were in the death certificates filed by 20 physicians and they were only 9.5% of all the physicians who issued the certificates.

Conclusions: It will be appropriate to make the necessary interventions to make the ICD-10 usage mandatory while registering a document to the death notification system and to explain to the physicians the importance of the correct and detailed causes of deaths written in death certificates.

Death certificates Causes of death International Classification of Diseases