In a hospital, how are dead bodies moved from the room to the morgue?

Factual Questions
41

T’is a lovely place indeed.

I suppose “Organ and Tissue Donation Program”, or some variant, is used by most hospitals. But harvest is the term staff uses. Usually as a verb. (For instance, I will call a critical value to a nurse and she will reply “Oh that guy, they are going to harvest him tomorrow anyway”).

Major organs are only one component. Eyes,skin, tendons, bones, veins… All have a lot of value. Both medically and commercially. Sterility is the main reason the OR is used, but access to equipment and such play a factor too. The patient is no longer legally alive though, so I suppose it could be done anywhere.

42

When my father died (universally despised bastard) at the “Nursing Home”, I was approached by a soft-spoken scumbag - “would you like an autopsy?” “Uh, No”. “Wouldn’t you like to know why he died?” “No, we’re pretty sure it had something to do with the lung cancer…”.
I then walked off - the scumbag was looking for another bit of income.

It was appropriate - scumbag exits via scumbag.

Ever see such profit-center exploitation in a real hospital?

43

This is why I like this m/b; so many things I’ve wondered about but have never thought to ask. I’ve learned a lot.

44

I was making a delivery to a hospital a few months ago. The ladies with whom I deal are very tiresome so I went to the cab of my truck to take a break.

I was drinking some water and I noticed a pair of double doors open. There were about 6-7 security guards and about the same number of people in scrubs. Two transporters pushed a gurney out the door with a black velvet cloth draped over it.

It all looked very official as they rolled the obvious body down the ramp and into the back of a waiting cargo van with a refrigeration unit on top. They were all silent and very respectful. It struck me as odd that they would send so many people instead of maybe one guard and one transporter.

Even more strange, they slammed the door to the van and started laughing and socializing and all went back in the double doors, leaving the body unattended in an unlocked cargo van without the refrigeration running. Three hours later it was still parked there. :dubious:

45

Before this thread, I assumed a couple strong orderlies did a Weekend At Bernies with the corpse down to the morgue. Thanks SDMB!

46

My cousin met her husband when they dissected the same cadaver in medical school. They have been married now for almost forty years. Apparently the formaldehyde turns some people on.

Regards,
Shodan

47

I worked in a fairly small hospital in the Chicago area one summer during college. My job was to take supplies up to the various floors. I was there on my first day with another guy who had just started. The phone rang, and the only other person in Sterile Supply answered it. She talked for a minute, hung up, then turned to us and said “Body pickup on 3-West”. The other new guy and I looked at each other in confusion. The other worker looked at us and said,

“Wait a minute, they didn’t tell you?”

“Tell us what?”

“We pick up all bodies when people die.”

“Ha ha”, we said. “Good try, but we aren’t falling for that”

She soon convinced us it wasn’t a joke.

In our hospital, it worked like this:

We would take a cart similar to the one in the picture upthread from our small morgue, which was a 150 or 200 square foot, very cold room.

We went up to the room where the body had stopped living. Before they had called us, the nurses had wrapped the bodies in a tanslucent plastic covering. This made things kind of “Icky”. We especially learned to hate body calls from the ER, where there was a much larger chance of seeing bloody messes through the plastic.

We would lift/roll the body onto the cart, which was really hard the first few times, but got easier (though never pleasant). We would then cover it with the top, which was a large thick sheet supported by metal bars (so it didn’t show the shape of anything).

No hallways were cleared or anything. We just rolled it to an elevator, which we often rode with the general public, and took it to the morgue in the basement. If anyone really thought about it, it was fairly evident what it was.

At the morgue, we would take the covering off, then just leave the body on the cart, to be picked up later (usually by the funeral home. Most of our business was elderly people who did not need an autopsy).

I worked with one fun but crazy guy who once took a loaded cart into the cafeteria. He didn’t uncover it, but was reprimanded nonetheless. He was mad about something, though I don’t remember what it was.

48

Wait, did you just make poetry?

49

And it’s harder to reuse it at home for wrapping leftovers.

50

Someday I’m going to write a horror novel called “Ward 13” :eek:

51

I worked in Ward 13 as well. :smiley:

52

I’ve always worked in teaching hospitals. I’ve never, ever seen a body taken to the morgue without first being wrapped and tied.
A morgue kit consists of a large plastic coated paper sheet, several ABD pads (large, absorbent dressings), Chux pads, several lengths of string, twine or just roller bandages, a belongings bag and ID tags.

The nurses, often working in pairs, since a dead body is much harder to move around. It’s called dead weight for a reason. When we die, we lose tonus. Even an unconscious person has tonus. All muscles lose it, thus the pads and chux, since the bowel, bladder and blood vessels are controlled by muscle tone.

First, we place the chux pads under the bottom and between the legs to catch any drainage. If IVs have been removed or there are fresh wounds, these areas have to be padded too. They will bleed until it clots or there is none left, otherwise. Next, we center the paper sheet so it extends a foot or so beyond the head and feet and position it under the body. If they had dentures, they are put into the mouth to preserve the shape of the face and the jaw is padded and tied shut. Then, the wrists and ankles are covered with the ABD pads and tied together with the string or twine as well. The padding is keep blood from pooling at the ligatures. Families don’t like the idea that grandma was trussed up like the proverbial Thanksgiving turkey.

Finally, the paper sheet is folded over the head and feet and the body is securely wrapped and tied.

The ID tags go in specific places. One on the toe or ankle, inside the wrapping. One at the wrist on the outside of the wrapping and a third with the belongings.

The body is kept flat, because in about 4 hours rigor mortis sets in. If the person has been in any other arrangment they will either have to have bones broken or they will remain in the not flat position for about 12 to 24 more hours.
The medical examiner or mortician gets very testy when that happens.

Fishtar, many states now use medical examiners or a combination of the two. Coroners are elected officials and in some states, do not require any medical training. Here is an interesting map showing which states have which. Many have hybrid systems. Medical examiners are doctors. Their speciality is Pathology. They simply chose to deal with quiet patients.

{hijack for a joke} It’s said that Internal Medicine doctors know everything… But, do nothing.
Surgeons, on the other hand, know nothing, but do everything.
Ah, but the pathologist knows everything and does everything. He just does it a day late. {end joke} (I guess you have to be in the field.)

As far as using the morgue carts, anyone with the slightest bit of hospital knowledge recognizes it for what it is. When the door shuts and everyone bustles quietly in and out of the room, every body knows.

Families with terminal loved ones know. Even kids get it. The thing is, death is a natural thing. People who are actually facing it don’t want to hide. They want to talk about what’s happening to them. They are mourning their own lives. They are mouring the living they will leave behind. They have a right to share their feelings.

Until very recently, 50 years or so, everyone died at home with family and friends by their sides.

We, the medical community, have made death into a dirty little secret. It’s our short coming. We are taught that our job is to save lives… at any cost. Death means we failed. The atitude is changing, slowly.

Families that talk about it, even joke about it, are better equipped to move on when it’s over.

I hope I’ve brought a bit of light into a dark corner.

53

HAHAHAHA!! THAT is so effing funny. Thank you. :smiley:

For the OP, in crime series like, Elementary, Law & Order(s), Shield, etc., you’ll notice that the morgue is often in an entirely different location than the hospitals, and that’s in big cities like NYC. A detailed autopsy is usually performed in those morgues. (As others have pointed out, other facilities will vary in mortuary design.)

I’ll add a silly story. An old friend tried studying a few different fields before trying another a lot of times. Once was mortuary science. In south Jersey, there was a three-day rainstorm, and the Cooper river claimed the life of an elderly man cruising the new rapids, fell off boat, hit his head and drowned. The police found him one day after he died.

He was face down in the water, so yes, he’s freaking dead. My friend came with the coroner to pick up the body. They strapped it to the gurney while the coroner was explaining the body removal procedures, when the upper part of the elderly man’s body lurked forward and exhaled loudly.

(pauses for gasps)

Turns out the instructing coroner did NOT properly fasten the belt on the drowned man around the upper torso. Granted, drowning and bloated victims (bodies) MAY do this when moved and adjusted to a gurney. I’ll also point out, the man only lurked forward a couple inches. The exhale was not an exhale, but air escaping his lungs after water had escaped.

Before this explanation hit the brains of my old friend and the coroner, they both darted from the gurney in separate directions. They covered half a mile each (according to friend) in a half a second. :smiley:

54

A lot further back than 1964.

55

Somewhere in SD Quodcap tells the story of someone hung like a horse, dies with a tent pole for the sheet covering him on the gurney, which caused some comment.

56

Ok, 60 years. My great-grandmother at age 97 died in her own bed after a brief illness. I was 11. That was 1957.
I was the one sitting with her when she died. It was sad, but expected, it wasn’t frightening in any way.

I’m guessing that was apocryphal.
There are situations where a hand might stay clenched, from a particular disease, but, what you’ve described can’t happen. Muscles lose all tone and blood flows to the lowers point in the body.

57

Normally, I’d agree, except that Qadgop works in a prison. If one of the residents hanged himself, a death erection is not impossible.

58

Hello!

I joined here just to reply. I am the person who picks up the deceased for the funeral home. I work for a large funeral home group (1,500 funerals per year). I drive a tinted dodge caravan that holds two purpose-made mortuary gurneys/cots. They fold into the back of the van, and have a thin (1") pad, then two straps that are reminiscent of a lap seatbelt in an old car, and then a maroon cover, as others have mentioned.

The procedure is non-uniform. All large hospitals have a morgue. There is a difference between a morgue and an autopsy suite. Some morgues contain an autopsy suite. The only two places you will find an autopsy suite are large hospitals (especially teaching hospitals) and the Coroner’s or Medical Examiner’s. where I live in Canada, the ME must do the autopsy if there are suspicious circumstances. Suspicious circumstances are a suicide, unexpected death, death during surgery, death within 10 days of a surgery, or death while pregnant.

The morgue will be (at minimum) a walk-in freezer with a metal gurney in it. At most (ie the most impressive one I’ve seen) was a large refrigerated room with a wall of 20 slide out trays. I have never seen a “TV” type morgue where there are drawers with seperate doors, but they do exist. The average hospital morgue has room for 3-10 metal gurneys in a large freezer, with an external room for transfers.

I have never seen a “covert” style cot for room removals. It is usual a larger gurney that may or may not have a rectangular cover, otherwise a sheet. The hospital porter or RN usually oversees the transfer to the morgue. Each hospital will have a different route, which may be designed to be short (just an elevator ride) or may be long, and usually a security guard will accompany. It really depends on the hospital and even who is working, whether they clear the elevator and/or hallway.

Deceased who are of the Jewish or Islamic faiths cannot go to the morgue or be handled by non-Jewish hands. For funeral homes, these are priority calls, and we will go all the way to the room (or once, for me, surgery theater) where the death happened, and we will take them straight onto our aforementioned mortuary cot. Then, depending on the funeral home, security guard, and level of devoutness, we will either exit through the usual rear entrance or (in cases of extreme devoutness) straight out the front door. In hospitals, the nurses or porters always bag the body in the room. In my province of Alberta it is legislated that the body of a deceased person must be contained in an impermeable container as soon as is possible. There is a kind of ‘chain of custody’ type thing called Responsible Persons. The first Responsibke Person is the primary caregiver at time of death. A Responsible Person has to follow certain regulations such as the impermeable container thing, as well as passing on knowledge of any infectious diseases. A type line of Responsible Persons might be… RN to Porter or Security to Funeral Home, possibly Medical Examiner before funeral home. This is a flawed system and vital information on infectious diseases is often missed, making embalming a fairly risky career in some ways. Many diseases with HIV can be embalmed with adequate precautions, but many are not to be embalmed (CJD, anthrax, Hep C).

In hospitals, the ‘release’ of a deceased to a funeral home takes time, so a hospital call is not a priority for a funeral home because the family is not present, the body is refrigerated, and the ‘release’ usually comes anywhere from 3-48 hours after the death, depending on the circumstances and work load.

With nursing home deaths, the body is often not bagged. Technically they should be, but resources and staff have a lot to do with it. A nursing home may or may not have a morgue. If they do it is almost always just a walk-in cooler big enough for one gurney. A nursing home death is a priority for a funeral home. The family may be present/waiting, and storage is almost always a worry because if they do have a morgue, it’s small. The funeral home will wheel in the mortuary cot and the employee (me) will speak with and comfort the family, and I always offer four options: say goodbye and leave, wait outside the room, be in the room, or be present in the room and assist in the transfer. Some people like to be present or even help as a means to closure, some like to say goodbye and take their leave. If the family is present, I will not exit through the back. Some funeral homes will. Personally I go with the policy of “in through the front door, out through the front door.” Some families will follow us out to the vehicle. Most nursing homes in my area ask that we don’t use a hearse, which isn’t a problem for our large funeral home which has two “First Call Vans” in our fleet, but some funeral homes only have hearses, and they will employ a third party contractor who operates a fleet of discreet vans. Our funeral home employs that contractor to pick people up from home deaths, because we can’t take the risk of being unprepared (ie, getting a 300 lb guy down three flights of stairs with family present). In our area, the same company has the contract for bringing bodies to the medical examiner.

I hope this provides some insight. I’m on my phone so sorry for typos.

59

I have never seen that either, after viewing/handling in excess of 4,000 bodies, with one exception- a man was working in a garage when the garage blew up (I never learned how) but his body was basically charred to a crisp, and he was burned into a position of sitting on a low chair, hands forward, with an erection.

60

I was not present when my grandmother and my big bro passed away. Dad was there, though… They both died at their homes.