‘It just provides more professionalism to our job’: impact of Nathan’s law one year later

The law expands training for delivering tragic news after a person dies.

Lexington, Ky (WTVQ): It’s been almost a year since “Nathan’s Law” passed in honor of a Lexington teenager who died in a tragic accident in Utah. The law expands training for delivering tragic news after a person dies.

Jeff Ivers, the Shelby County Coroner who teaches the training program says this law provides coroners with more professionalism. The law is named after Nathan Burnett, an 18-year-old from Lexington, who died in March of 2021 due to a snowboarding accident, when on spring break in Park City Utah. His mother was given a handwritten paper with contact information to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office in Utah. The family felt that the manner in which they were notified was cold and unprofessional.

“Once you knock on that door and that family comes to that door, it’s going to be a memorable thing, that tragic news that you tell them,” Ivers said. It’s going to be something with them forever,” Ivers said. He says before “Nathan’s Law” passed in January it wasn’t the coroner’s responsibility to notify the family. Instead, “if someone passed away in Fayette County and they lived in Shelby County, they would call our dispatch and a lot of times they would just send a law enforcement officer out to make that notification.”

Therefore, there was no set guideline law enforcement had to follow, but now, Deputy Coroners and Coroners are required to take a four-hour training, within three years of assuming office. The course also includes instruction of the grieving process and best practices for providing a death notice to the family. Under the law, there must be a follow up with the family within 48 hours of notifying them.

“We could take a law enforcement officer with us,” Ivers said. “Or we might take a pastor with us to be able to make that notification.” He says the extra person, can provide families with assistance once they hear of the tragic news and can also help the notifier, have an extra hand to help comfort the family. “It just provides more professionalism to our job to make sure that were treating our citizens in each community each one of them the way they would want to be notified,” he said

After the training each coroner, or deputy coroner receives a card showing that they completed the death notification course.