Funeral Industry Support & Educational Specialists

Empathetic Support for all funeral industry & Allied professionals

Who is AFITS

Jan Field

A highly trained embalming, exhumation & (post mortem) reconstructive specialist, she also has decades of locum funeral director & crematorium operation experience. Jan is a passionate, tutor, mentor & presenter. Jan has a unique sub-speciality of disaster victim identification & virtual autopsy.

Mark Simpson

Mark is a specialist medical educator with a background & formal training in nursing, medical science, clinical pharmacology & very unique sub-speciality, embalming & funeral & allied professional education. He has written numerous articles & presented for international and national funeral & chemical companies.

Putting science back in Mortuary Science

Some of the available topics for discussion or presentation.

Is there something else you would like to learn about?

(O)EDEMA – treating systemic & peripheral (o)edema cases – against all odds
JAUNDICE – a physiological/anatomical nightmare – treating a coloured curse case
DEATH BY CANDIDA SPECIES (Thrush) – Invasive systemic fungal infections – should your prep., be different? Should your choice of embalming chemical, be different? Long term preservation risks
NEMBUTAL SODIUM– use in assisted suicide & execution – embalming challenges of these cases
MORTUARY & EMBALMING IMPLICATIONS OF MODERN CHEMO & RADIOTHERAPEUTIC AGENTS – an update (incl.) permanent multiple radioactive seed implantation)
FORMALDEHYDE a prescribed therapeutic agent, in the living
Illicit drug use (incl.) synthetics & opiates)– vascular access & integrity challenges
CAN A FOETUS/FETUS BE SUCCESSFULLY EMBALMED IN UTERO – the intra vascular & placental challenges – embalming progress observed by endoscope (a case study)
VIROLOGY AND THE MORTUARY – inside & outside the body, viral survival rates – the risks evaluated incl., Hepatitis A-Z, HIV, Zika etc
CORONA VIRUS’s (incl.) COVID19) – mortuary & embalming implications
POST EMBALMING RESULTS/CHANGES – how current aggressive pharmaco-therapeutic agents/therapies adversely influence outcomes.
SEPSIS – UNDERSTANDING DEATH BY MULTI-RESISTANT HOSPITAL INFECTIONS – systemic organ failure – sepsis & embalming
NON-SURGICAL MINIMALLY INVASIVE AUTOPSY – the increasing use of non- invasive technologies to confirm a cause of death.
ARTERIO-VENOUS MALFORMATION (AVM) – “what goes up, must come down, this is not always true! – an arterial embalmers curse
CJD – the latest research – is the risk of X infection real? – an update for funeral industry workers
EMBALMING BEFORE AN AUTOPSY – how, why & when?
ELECTROCUTION – vascular, viscera & tissue challenges
EXPLOSIVE CAPABILITIES OF GTN (Angina) patches during cremation
PTSD/COMPLICATED GRIEF – the assumption funeral industry employees are/expected to be, psychologically strong professionals, somehow dissociated from their work.
YOUR PHYSICAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH MATTERS – do you care for yourself, as well as you do, for those in your care? Physically & psychologically funeral industry workers often neglect their own (health) care. It’s time for a confronting “check-up”…there are things much worse than death