What do they do with the body immediately after a hospital death?
Is it sent directly to the funeral home (autopsy is unnecessary)? Or do they do ‘stuff’ to it at the hospital first?
If a person dies in the hospital, do they park the body in some cold room? Do they just leave it laying in its bed till the funeral home comes?
Anyone?
I’m pretty sure that most major hospitals have a morgue for storage as well as an incinerator (for appendixes, arms, legs, etc.)
Here (at the hospital I work in) we transport to the morgue until pick-up from the pathologist for autopsy or the funeral home.
I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen some of it.
I thought the first thing they did was slash it open and check it out for lost instruments.
Ray
Thanks nano byte, that will give me great comfort in the days ahead.
Your kindness is much appreciated, and I hope someday this kindness is returned to you tenfold, as you so richly deserve.
kellibelli, I would imagine a lot of hospitals do it differently, depending on state laws too. In my case, we live in Atlanta. The hospital sent the chaplin to Father’s room first and stayed with us and explained what would happen. They asked us to leave for a few minutes and they shut his eyes and when we came back in, I also noticed the toe tag, which was a bit tough at the time. He was taken down to the morgue, and Mother had refused an autopsy. She had already contacted the funeral home, and they came and got him. We took his suit to the funeral home itself later the same day.
I don’t know why you’re asking, but you’ll be in my thoughts, it is an awful time if you have to go through it yourself, or help someone you care about it through it. Good Luck.
Judy
“I only use 10% or less of what I study. It’s a waist. sined, Dropout” Up The Down Stair Case
I wasn’t aware of the personal nature of your question until I stumbled upon your thread in the Pit, Kelli. Perhaps Ray didn’t either. Best of luck in what must be a very trying time.
Uness you are dealing with a gigantic hospital where things are done by the numbers, the whole process is as humane as possible.
As I remember this porcess being done, the IVs, or other tubing are removed, bandages are replaced, the body is washed and then removed to a holding area (for lack of a better term) where the funeral home would come to pick it up.
There were no toe tags or other exotics done anywhere where any family member would see it.
It was kindly and thoughtfully done.
You should be able to ask any question of the people you meet - nurses or doctors.
Hope you have some family to be with you.
Jois
In reference to Ursa Major’s last comment, maybe I’m supposed to apologize for my last post to this thread. No, I don’t hang out in The Pit and didn’t read any posts of Kelli’s there, but her OP query here seemed to be simply matter of fact.
I can’t get interested in what people do with dead human bodies, beyond satisfying public health requirements and obtaining any legal or possibly medical evidence that might be useful to society. I am interested in what they do with live ones, particularly what medical personnel and medical institutions do with them.
Of course, my previous post here was simply flippant, and I guess asking questions here on the given subject might get some straight answers; but asking them of physicians, and sometimes of nurses and other staff, consistantly isn’t likely to.
One small example related to this death topic: I wasn’t on location where my mother died, but she was in her nineties, quite mobile, but with very little memory left, had suffered a stroke not too long before which had messed up her language sequencing, apparently both vocally and as written, and she had suffered with so-called congestive heart disease for years, which often resulted in episodes of difficult breathing due to fluid in her lungs.
On her last episode, the local health-checking service for seniors was notified of the immediate problem, and she was taken to the hospital, as she had been several times before (the details of which I don’t know), and put in the ICU with IVs and whatever. I was notified by relatives that she was in the hospital as before. Two days later, I was notified by them that she had died at the hospital.
I spoke the next day to her physician by telephone to learn what had gone on in the ICU. Though having seen her earlier in this hospital stay, he hadn’t been at the hospital the day she expired and he simply informed me that she had died quietly in her sleep.
Thereafter, I went to the hospital and read the patient record of her last stay there. For some reason, the write-up there was quite detailed and graphic. She had asked to see my father a number of times and then started frantically removing her IV, etc., so they doped her up, stuck the stuff back in, and she went to sleep with a monitor recording her physiology. The signals stopped a few hours later. I don’t know what the range of procedures and policies are in various ICUs, so I don’t know how evaluate the standard of care given her there, under the recorded circumstances.
I didn’t see a lot about such on the Web. You can interpret her last behavior in various ways, intentional or simply impersonally phenomenal. Someone even suggested seeing it as expression of her earlier desire not to have her basic functions sustained beyond a state of recoverable meaningful life. I have trouble interpreting her final behavior as that coherent at that point. I don’t know the medical particulars of the ability to do much for her health at that point, and generally she’d had a full life and her life, at that point, had no reasonable quality.
Whatever evaluation ought to be made of the standard of ICU care given her during that of stay of hers at the hospital, I regard the report of her doctor to me as being essentially just one more of the lies I’ve heard from physicians throughout my life (though never on life-or-death matters). Technically, you can say what he told me was “the truth”, but it certainly was not a reasonably whole truth, and I can be certain that he was told by the ICU staff of essentially what was written up in the patient record I read; at lest he had the duty to have been aware of the records contents.
My father died the end of last year, also in his nineties and with even less memory and general mentality left, but after having been immobile only in the last month or so. This was at an assisted-living residence near my sister’s on the opposite coast. I don’t think I heard what the death certificate for my mother said as to the cause of her death, but I’m told, by my sister, that some MD, who had never treated my father and hadn’t been on scene at his death at the residence, just filled out his death certificate as having died of Alzheimer’s disease, because that was the term used by the residence staff in respect to the death of residents there whose brains had worn out.
At one time ‘Alzheimer’s syndrome/disease’, I think, meant something rather specific that was reflected physiologically in a certain scrambled pattern of brain cells upon autopsy and correlating to somewhat well-defined behavioral limitations. I believe my father’s CNS degeneration, only toward the very end of his life, was of a different vascular nature, but any confusion of future medical knowledge from this sort of worthless grade of medical record-keeping is only reflected in the use of death statistics to influence the world’s future medical care.
Both my parents were cremated, as they had wished, soon after death, but I don’t know the detailed steps and routes taken in doing this and don’t care. My mother’s ashes are under a tree where she lived (Grass Valley, CA.US) when she died, which is not far from where she was born in Nevada City, CA. They’re probably there illegally, so don’t tell the lawyers around this MB. I don’t know whether my sister has done anything with my father’s ashes. There were no memorials for either and there are no monuments for either. RIP.
Ray (Ashes are constituents of soil.)
kelli–when I answered your post I thought you were just asking a question to satisfy a question that just popped up. I had no idea it was so personal in nature. That is why I answered so simply. Of course, there are many procedures and actions performed by the staff to attempt to comfort the families in the event of a death. I offer you my most sincere condolences and I apologize if my response was too clinical for what you were needing to know.
I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen some of it.
Beth, I was looking for simple answers. this is GQ after all.
As for asking anyone in person, doctors etc, every time I open my mouth, I risk that the screaming will begin. itwas way, way easier to type my question.
Thanks for the answers guys.
When we had a patient die in our Recovery Room, we first rolled the bed into a side room that is normally used for pediatrics or isolation purposes. The body was cleaned up and the linens were all changed. The family was called in (the body never moved out of the RR) and I’m not sure what happened after that. Hospital administration was there so I assume they talked with the family on what they wanted the hospital to do with the body. I guess what ever the family chooses will be honored by the hospital.
kelli, I’m sorry to hear that you & your family are suffering right now. Please accept my condolences.
To answer your questions, when a hospitalized patient is noted to be near death, or to have died, the hospital staff would first confirm that the doctor has ordered no resuscitation attempt (per the patient’s wishes), or attempt to revive the patient. If the patient dies, s/he is left in the hospital bed until such time as family members are able to come in (or not - it’s their choice).
Afterwards, the patient’s remains are taken to the morgue. All inserted medical devices (IVs, & other tubes or lines) are left in place & cut close to the body at this point, in case an autopsy is needed for legal reasons (see below) or for medical information (yes Mr. Jones had stomach cancer, but we don’t understand how or why he died this way now). Autopsies for medical information are subject to family approval; autopsies for legal purposes are not.
Depending on state laws & how long the patient has been an inpatient, the local medical examiner/coroner may have to be called, even if the cause of death seems obvious. Generally, this does not apply if someone was an inpatient for 24 hours or longer. If a patient was known to have terminal cancer & died after a less-than-24 hour stay, though, calling the ME would usually be a formality, and the body would be immediately released to the funeral home without an autopsy.
The funeral home comes to the hospital, picks up the remains, & prepares it for burial or whatever arrangements have been requested.
I hope this info helps in some small way, kelli. If anything wasn’t clear, feel free to e-mail me…
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.