Public health documents like death certificates are important to help epidemiologists as they investigate leading causes of death. This crucial information also helps them as they research patterns and effects of health and disease throughout the nation.

It's important to keep proper records of how we die, since what kills people today and what killed people in the past are based on death certificates. According to a new study, death certificates are not always accurate and that's a big problem.

Barbara A. Wexelman from Columbia University led a study in which 521 resident doctors in New York City were surveyed. These resident doctors were familiar with the public record keeping system; one-third of them had filled out more than 11 death certificates in the past year prior to the study.

As the Washington post reported, the study found that 48.6 percent of the resident doctors reported that what they wrote on the death certificate was different from what the person actually died from. According to 75 percent of the doctors, the system used in New York City doesn't always accept the real cause of death so they often put something else.

Other answers reported on the surveys included responses such as "My attending told me to put something else" or "I did not know why the patient died/I took my best guess.

"This is the first comprehensive survey of medical, surgical, and emergency medicine residents on the current cause-of-death reporting system. It is also the first to document that physicians completing death certificates often knowingly complete them inaccurately. These errors may have lasting effects on the public health priorities of the community," the study authors wrote.