Michael Karl McNeil: death investigation coursework, September 2026

Three courses were added to my training record this week. They are listed here the way everything else on this blog is listed: by name, by issuer, and by the number a reader can check.

Death Investigation Training Academy

Foundations of Environmental Death Investigations, issued 29 September 2026. The Missouri POST Program accepts it for approved-provider training credit under Control Number 31578, 1.5 hours in Technical Studies. The American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators accepts it for 1.5 hours of continuing education, approval number 26-117.

Environmental Asphyxiation and Entrapment Deaths, issued 29 September 2026. Missouri POST Control Number 31574, one hour in Technical Studies; ABMDI approval number 26-116, one hour.

CDC TRAIN

Investigation and Certification of Drug Toxicity Deaths, course WB4884, completed 28 September 2026. The certificate is one of completion. CDC TRAIN prints on its face that it conveys no continuing-education credit, and I list it the same way.

Why the approval numbers are on the page

A course is worth what its reviewer is worth. Missouri’s POST Program vets the providers whose courses it credits, and ABMDI sets the continuing-education standard for the people who investigate deaths for coroners and medical examiners across the country. A control number or an approval number ties a certificate to that review. Two of the three certificates carry both; the third carries a federal course number. None of them makes me a coroner, a medical examiner or a registered death investigator, and I do not describe them that way.

Where the subject matter lands

Occupational fatalities are investigated by the employer, by Cal/OSHA under the eight-hour reporting rule in 8 CCR §342(a), and later by the lawyers on each side. Heat and cold, drowning, oxygen-deficient and toxic atmospheres, engulfment, crushing and entrapment, and drug toxicity are among the mechanisms those investigations turn on. Understanding how a medical examiner reaches a cause and manner of death is what lets an investigator read the autopsy report correctly, ask for the toxicology when it matters, and keep a mechanism out of the report that the medical record will not support.

The rest of the training record, with the older courses and their issuers, is on the About page here and on the credentials page of the business site.

Michael Karl McNeil, REP, RIH, EPP, QSD — former Fire Battalion Chief; environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, forensic and expert consulting.

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