# In a hospital, how are dead bodies moved from the room to the morgue?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 27, 2014, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354 "2014-05-27T05:58:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/1 "2014-05-27T05:58:19Z")
I don’t need an answer fast, its just curiosity because I just finished watching Re-animator again. I know that its just a vid based on a hundred year old story, but I’d guess that it would really upset other patients to see sheet draped bodies being pushed down the hall. AND, do hospitals really have morgues? I’d guess that they have cold lockers to store bodies until they are sent to wherever.
---
### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/2 "2014-05-27T06:11:42Z")
In hospitals where I’ve worked, it’s a sheet-draped body being wheeled down the hall. The hall is cleared of non-staff first.
---
### Author:  [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/3 "2014-05-27T06:42:13Z")
At the hospital where I’m interning, they have rectangular covers over them, [like so.](http://i.imgur.com/DUEQ7Pi.jpg) It took me a while to catch on as to what they were.
---
### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/4 "2014-05-27T07:20:32Z")
> [@flatlined](#):
>
> . . . AND, do hospitals really have morgues? I’d guess that they have cold lockers to store bodies until they are sent to wherever.
How is a cooled cadaver storage room not a morgue?
---
### Author:  [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/5 "2014-05-27T07:44:24Z")
See…that’s how ignorant I am. I always thought a morgue was where people got cut up to see why they died. I kinda thought that if you were in the hospital and died from a known cause, say heart problems, you wouldn’t get cut up because everyone knew why you died.
---
### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/6 "2014-05-27T08:04:04Z")
A morgue is a place where you store bodies. Some will also be equipped with space and equipment for performing autopsies. Large general hospitals will usually be so equipped, if only because people who die suddenly or unexpectedly are quite likely to be brought to hospital, and that will be a convenient place to set up an autopsy facility. And of course while not all deaths occurring in hospital require further investigation, some will.
---
### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/7 "2014-05-27T08:17:13Z")
> [@Mikahw](#):
>
> At the hospital where I’m interning, they have rectangular covers over them, [like so.](http://i.imgur.com/DUEQ7Pi.jpg) It took me a while to catch on as to what they were.
My wife (a former nurse) reports having used something like this, but further disguised (with the addition of sheets and head rest) just to look like an empty wheeled bed/trolley.
---
### Author:  [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/8 "2014-05-27T08:50:15Z")
We have a mortuary at the hospital where I work and a deceased child can either go down on the bed or cot he/she was in or the parents sometimes ask to carry their child themselves.
---
### Author:  [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/9 "2014-05-27T09:18:18Z")
When I was psych nursing there were only three wards where you expected anyone to die. The male and female surgical wards were upstairs from the mortuary so a quick trip in the lift (elevator) solved that. The medical ward had a few deaths and if I was on the shift I got the job of laying them out and getting them to the mortuary. Everyone else seemed to get freaked out by it. Generally the deceased had been in ICU. You could go out the back way from there to the loading dock where a waiting ambulance would whisk the body down the hill to it’s refrigerated destination.
---
### Author:  [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/10 "2014-05-27T10:12:28Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> My wife (a former nurse) reports having used something like this, but further disguised (with the addition of sheets and head rest) just to look like an empty wheeled bed/trolley.
That’s a great idea. So they sink the bed down and cover it to look like an empty bed. I feel I must have seen these before without knowing it.
---
### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/11 "2014-05-27T11:10:49Z")
As I’ve often opined, spiral slip-n-slide would get the job done. Maybe some day my dream will become reality.
---
### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/12 "2014-05-27T11:12:31Z")
In the old days, it was a popular belief (possibly not entirely untrue) that patients in wards, who were likely to die, got mover nearer the doors.
Of course we don’t have those wards these days, with 10 beds down each side of a large room, and I think that bodies are moved discretely in trolleys like this - [http://www.leec.co.uk/products/mortuary/mortuary-trolleys/traction-concealment-trolley](http://www.leec.co.uk/products/mortuary/mortuary-trolleys/traction-concealment-trolley)
Remember that a body may well be very heavy and we have to make it safe for the porter to handle them.
---
### Author:  [@Saturn\_Dreams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saturn_Dreams)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/13 "2014-05-27T11:32:39Z")
Former part-time porter checking in. We used a device similar to the picture the one Mangetout posted with a different colour cover. Officially, we were supposed to transfer the body to that covered stretcher first and then transfer them to another stretcher when we got to the morgue (that doesn’t have a cover), but because we were lazy and didn’t want to transfer a body twice, and didn’t want to touch the body more than we had to, we would only use the uncovered morgue stretcher during the night shift when there weren’t any visitors.
On a tangent, I remember all the fun we had “initiating” new workers by having them go for a body run and having someone wait for them in the morgue lying on a stretcher under a sheet. As soon as the new guy came close by, the guy hiding under the sheet would get up and touch the recruit. You didn’t even need to make a sound. Just touching them scared the crap out of them. Good fun had by all… except the time when one veteran got punched out by natural reaction and another time when a new recruit quit the same day.
---
### Author:  [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/14 "2014-05-27T11:38:57Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#):
>
> When I was psych nursing there were only three wards where you expected anyone to die. The male and female surgical wards were upstairs from the mortuary so a quick trip in the lift (elevator) solved that. The medical ward had a few deaths and if I was on the shift I got the job of laying them out and getting them to the mortuary. Everyone else seemed to get freaked out by it. Generally the deceased had been in ICU. You could go out the back way from there to the loading dock where a waiting ambulance would whisk the body down the hill to it’s refrigerated destination.
Are you in Sydney? That sounds very like a psych hospital I worked at once.
---
### Author:  [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/15 "2014-05-27T11:43:31Z")
North Ryde later Macquarie.
---
### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/16 "2014-05-27T11:48:17Z")
> [@AaronX](#):
>
> That’s a great idea. So they sink the bed down and cover it to look like an empty bed. I feel I must have seen these before without knowing it.
I could see it backfiring occasionally - if there’s some sudden local emergency (i.e. visitor collapses in a hallway) - and it just looks to non-staff as though there’s an empty bed right there.
---
### Author:  [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/17 "2014-05-27T12:45:25Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#):
>
> North Ryde later Macquarie.
Yep, sounded like Cameron Block to me.
---
### Author:  [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/18 "2014-05-27T12:52:01Z")
And the far more modern Ward 14.
---
### Author:  [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/19 "2014-05-27T13:05:53Z")
I once asked this very question. I asked a nurse, I think, it was a long time ago. She told me, whenever possible, and, almost always, the patient is made to appear as though they are only sleeping. And so, are routinely moved around the hospital with no one being any the wiser.
She said the tip off was when the sheet completely obscured the neck, because usually they have a rolled facecloth tucked in there to keep the mouth closed!
But it was a long time ago so perhaps it’s not the case any more.
---
### Author:  [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2014, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354/20 "2014-05-27T13:24:59Z")
I stayed over (illegally) occasionally in the hospital where both my parents worked when I was a kid. My Dad was the Head Theatre Porter - something like chief orderly for surgery? - meaning that he’d sometimes be moving a body that was dead. The dead bodies had a sheet over their faces, green if they’d died in theatre, white if they’d died afterwards. Living people had their faces uncovered.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-hospital-how-are-dead-bodies-moved-from-the-room-to-the-morgue/689354.md?page=2)