Just wondering if there is always someone in the hospital morgue waiting to retrieve a dead body? How does that all work, you know, getting the bodies into the morgue? Can any doctor do it or only specified hospital morgue employees? Thank you kindly for your help 
Nope, there isn’t 24-hour staffing even in larger academic medical centers.
Typically there will be specific hospital staff with the responsibility for moving the corpus delicti off the patient floor and into the morgue, co-ordinating handoffs to funeral homes etc. They can be paged as needed.
The only situation where I’d expect round-the-clock staffing is in a morgue that’s part of a medical examiner’s department in a major city like New York or Los Angeles.
I once spent an eight hour shift guarding a dead prisoner in a hospital because there was no coroner on duty to take possession of the body.
Thanks so much very helpful info. Perfect. So happy I found this site! You’ve been a great help.
Thank you so much, you’ve been a great help!
Back when I worked in a medium-size hospital, the "morgue"was basically just a cold room. The patient care staff took the bodies down there (just like we took patients anywhere else they needed to go) and a hospital administrator was responsible for transfering possession to the mortician or coroner.
We didn’t normally do autopsies, but when it was necessary, we’d take the body to the pathology lab, and they’d take it to the morgue when they were finished.
BTW, other hospitals did it differently, but we didn’t cover the deceased’s head with a sheet. We simply closed their eyes and acted like they were asleep until we got downstairs.
Sounds right. I worked in several hospital basements, that’s where the morgue and the IT facilities were. The morgues were just locked rooms. I assume hospital personnel were available to go in if needed at any time. At a large hospital I wouldn’t be surprised if morticians were coming in at all hours, especially early morning. Time for burial is short for some, and they need to get moving when a body has to be shipped far away.
So you successfully kept him from walking away?
They should be, people are just dying to get in.
::ducks barrage of dead cats and rotten produce::
double post
This thread from a bit over a year ago may have some good info for the OP: In a hospital, how are dead bodies moved from the room to the morgue? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board
This may be a morbid question, but how cold would a room have to to prevent any noticeable damage to a corpse over say a 12-24 hour period?
Need answer fast?
Our Pathology Department houses our morgue, but all of (or most of) our bodies are of newborns or infants as we are a very large labor and delivery hospital.
During the regular working hours, the department is staffed with 2 or 3 staff members.
After hours, a nurse, or occasionally the hospital ‘house supervisor’ (if the nurse is busy), will transport our babies between the cold area (a large refrigerator) and the required the patient’s room. Staff that can transport our infants have special badges that allow us access to elevators and doors.
When traveling in the halls, we take the quieter halls and dress and style our deceased as we would any other infant but sometimes cover the bassinet lightly with a baby blanket as though the baby were sleeping to discourage strangers from looking.
We sign our babies in and out in a log book as needed. Typically, we wait until the family reports to us that they have finished visiting with the child before we transport them to the morgue. But often families will call for the baby after we have moved him or her to our cold area.
In such a case, we will identify the infant, remove the shroud, assure the infant is properly dressed, wrap him or her in a warm blanket, prepare the infant as any other, and take the baby to his or her parent(s).
As a general rule, infants of less than 20 weeks may be disposed of by the hospital and those greater that 20 weeks require a death certificate and family decisions regarding whether to have a funeral or not. If the family does not want a funeral, we have the infant cremated.
We have an awesome group of volunteers who provide us with beautiful, delicate, and unique hand-made outfits for our little lost babies, in all sizes. They also make us ‘memory boxes’- similar to hand painted hat boxes- that have plaster of paris for hand or foot prints, envelopes for a lock of hair, and a disposable camera. We do all these things (including taking pictures) and offer the box to the family. If the family does not take this box, we store them for several years (5?). After time, we have the boxes cremated, and once a year have an annual bereavement ceremony.
Ca7399 thank you for your and your colleagues’ kindness to these bereaved families.
If someone tried to wheel a corpse into our lab for the sake of convenience, there’d be a helluva stink.
Maybe I could rephrase that…
Where did you work, Our Lady of Really Casual?
*…we’d drink a lot of Dos Equis first.
We didn’t surprise them with it, for cryin’ out loud! If we were told to take something - or someone - to pathology, then pathology had some knowledge that we were coming.
A little surprised no one picked up on this before. It was an old, old hospital building. There were a total of two elevators to get between floors, and we had to go through the same corridors that everyone else did to get from one side of the building to another. It was not unusual that we and the deceased ended up sharing the elevator with someone who was visiting another patient, or some other civilian. It was decided long before I got there to make the transportation as inconspicuous as possible, much like** Ca7399**'s experience.
I’m sure there’s some body there.
A friend is a medical technician at night in a small hospital. Theoretically he monitors the instruments but it’s night so he does just about everything that doesn’t absolutely require a nurse or doctor. When he’s on shift it’s always him that performs that final bit of care for “his patients.” Not all of the med techs approach it with the same sense of duty so when he’s not it may be one of the on shift nurses. There’s nobody on shift just to perform those duties though.
Staffed not stiffed.