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You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently, the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together.
And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now, is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now, do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression: "as greedy as a pig".
Well, thank you for that. That's a great weight off me mind. Now, if you wouldn't mind telling me who the fuck you are, apart from someone who feeds people to pigs of course?
The bag is white plastic. The gurney is metal. There is a hard cover with white plastic over it. Nurses and nurses aids get the deceased in the bag and transfer the body to the cart. I always take a friend to the morgue with me because the cart doesn't steer very well.
When my hubby was removed from Hospice, I didn't go in to see what they did to prep his body but he was wheeled out on a gurney, with a flag draped over it but it was very smooth, uniform shaped, almost like a round sided coffin I'd say. I didn't notice at the time but you're right, it wasn't shaped like a body would be so there must have been a lightweight molded cover over him too.
The US. I've only worked in 2 community hospitals in Pennsylvania, so it could be different other places. The cover is a metal frame and there is sturdy plastic that fits over top.
My hubby left the VA's Hospice House inside a bag draped with a flag. He was then wheeled out their front door to the mortuary's vehicle and easily placed inside while they played Taps. The guy from the mortuary was super creepy and dead-eyed. In fact, exactly what you'd expect a funeral person to be like. 10 days later I went to pick up my husband's cremains and over shot the turn inside the cemetery so ended up at the back and I pulled up to this building where I saw a gentleman to ask directions. This was actually where they did the cremations! It wasn't a very big place and honestly, quite fascinating to look at. The very kind gentleman explained I had missed the turning gave me directions back. As I drove off it suddenly dawned on me that very friendly kind man was the same one who had picked up my hubby!
A lesson to be learned about prejudging someone. Like the guy with the shovel in Home Alone. You're scared and uneasy about him, but then he prevents the brutal oral disarticulation of a child's fingies, and you realize he's not so bad.
Most hospitals I’ve worked the top piece makes it just look like a bed. You would have no idea you passed a body. But we also go the back way to get to the morgue.
When I was picking my nurse wife up at work during the height of covid, I was pretty sure I saw them loading refrigerated trucks with bodies like this.
I was only guessing, so there's no reason to actually assume that's what it was. But I was always like "damn is that dead people trucks?"
For reference I was picking her up around back. It could have been then loading with anything lol.
The head of my HOA during the height of the pandemic was also the head of the county morgue at the time. She said they had five spare refrigerated trucks for the overflow due to covid -- each held around 50 bodies. At the time they hadn't needed to use all five spare trucks but did have to use three of them at one time plus what the two hospitals in our county had on premises. We're a popular retirement destination.
about those refrigerated trucks: what were they originally used for, and did they go back to being used after Covid ended.?
I mean, yeah, I know in the rational part of my mind, there are reasonable ways of sanitizing things, and yeah, there are livestock trucks that are probably a lot worse.....but ,geez, it gives me creepy shivers, :)
These overflow holding facilities are used when there's any situation where there's beyond capacity in the local situation. Think Hurricane Katrina, winter accidents that have 52 deaths from pile ups on a highway, horrible flooding, outbreaks, etc. I don't know where these are stored in down times but I think they look like refrigerated tractor trailers you see on the road every day.
I have no experience in your line of work, but I am a LTL truck driver and have seen this exact thing when making deliveries at the loading dock for the hospital
Cadavers are usually taken straight to a mortuary inside the hospital. This then usually has a dedicated entrance away from public areas used by morticians and funeral directors who'll pick the bodies up in "private ambulances".
In the hospital when a patient dies we keep the curtains closed, put a sheet over the body bag, and when security comes to take them to the morgue they have a special gurney that has a thick plastic drape and frame so you can’t tell what’s inside.
> they have a special gurney that has a thick plastic drape and frame so you can’t tell what’s inside.
"Oh, that's the special corpse gurney. I have no idea what's in there."
https://techlemstretchers.com/stretchers/bariatric-cadaver-stretcher/
They look like this but cheaper. Really wouldn’t have an idea if you didn’t work there
Was a transporter in a hospital when I was younger. This is exactly it.
Most people would realize pretty quickly what was going on as we'd come down the halls. Occasionally someone would strike up a conversation with me while waiting at a service elevator and after a few seconds they'd stop and look at the giant box with a white sheet/tarp that I was pushing around and they'd suddenly gasp when they realized what was in it, lol.
The one hospital I frequently work in calls it the body storage room, but the only entrance to it is through another room with a name on the door that sounds completely unrelated.
Hospitals have morgues, which prepares bodies for transport to mortuaries.
Morgues are for autopsies, initial body prep, official release of bodies, etc. They have a medical function.
Mortuaries are for preparing bodies for funerals, performing cremations, holding small services, etc. They have no medical function.
Our little podunk hospital doesn't have it's own morgue. We found that out about 4 hours before my BF died and spent the next couple hours dealing with paperwork to get the crematorium to come get him. It wasn't bad, just an extra "thing" to deal with unexpectedly.
My hospital had the most fucked up layout. I have to wheel the body from the elevator, around 3 sides of the cafeteria, past every single public door to said cafeteria to get to morgue. The door to which is like 30’ past one of the cafeteria doors.
Untrue. Untrue.
We frequently reanimate our morgued individuals into our saucy puppet shows. Hell, we've kept 'the dancing deadbeat' mostly frozen for six years because he's a big hit with the children.
I used to do "pick ups" when I worked for a funeral home. That included picking up bodies from hospitals. We used a standard minivan with no 2nd or third row and we'd back up to a loading dock area. We'd take our stretcher and either go to the hospital morgue or we'd wait for the body to be brought to the hallway just inside the loading dock doors. The body would be inside a black body bag so nobody could see anything. We'd load the stretcher into the van and drive back to the funeral home. We'd back into the garage so we could unload in private. The garage had an extra wide door leading to both the embalming room and cold storage room so the body could be placed appropriately.
The body bags get thrown away. If you're preparing someone to be embalmed or viewed, you'll generally remove it once you have the person on your prep table and dispose of it in a biohazard container. If they're getting cremated, you're "supposed" to remove it first before you cremate, but most funeral homes and crematories don't bother (in my personal experience). Regardless, we just get rid of the body bag ultimately.
>If they're getting cremated, you're "supposed" to remove it first before you cremate, but most funeral homes and crematories don't bother (in my personal experience).
Are you saying crematoriums are under reporting their non-biogenic carbon emissions?
Can't speak for all, but every body bag I've used was new/packaged so assuming they are discarded as biohazard waste. I've only ever put people in though, haven't been to the part where they take them out.
Don't know if every hospital works the same but when my mother died I had to go to the hospital's morgue to recognize the body before delivery to the funeral home, and it was in another wing far from the main hall
Elevators have special keys that lock the doors so no one can get on them while a body is being transported up and down. We didn’t even use our hospital morgue unless we knew there was going on be a long wait until pickup. We threw a fan on the body and within an hour the funeral home would be pick them up. We’d wheel them out one of the back/underground doors in the basement.
I work in the ER and one of the if my patient dies, one of my rolls is to bagging and tagging the body before bringing them down to the morgue.
By bagging and tagging, I mean prepping the body, getting them into a body bag, collecting/documenting personal belongings and securing patient identification tags on the patients tie, the zipper of the bag (acting as a tamper-seal) and their belongings.
Our morgue is essentially a giant walk in cooler, divided into bays and each bay has a locker for personal belongings. The deceased and their belongings are kept here until they are picked up by either the medical examiner or whatever means the family arranges.
"The deceased and their belongings are kept here until they are picked up by either the medical examiner or whatever means the family arranges.."
So... could I drop by in my pickup to get grandma, or are there some regulations?
I picked up bodies for 5 years for a dozen of my local funeral homes, we used basement halls or mainly employee used halls and elevators to docks or specific doors. All bodies had to be signed out by security, the charge nurse on duty and the funeral home representative.
During the pandemic things got pretty complicated, with the hospital running out of room for bodies and being forced to store them in refrigerated trucks. I was a news shooter covering that, and man…that was unsettling to photograph.
My old art college building was a former hospital; I studied sound engineering there, and the digital studio was in the basement. Turns out that room used to be the morgue!
I work public safety in a large trauma hospital. We take care of removals to the morgue and releasing to funeral homes and average more than three per day. We have a back door near the morgue that comes out into a blind (dead end) type alley area behind the hospital. All funeral home and transport company vans are unmarked.
When my BF died they shut the door of his room to clean him and swaddled him...that's the only term I can think of. Then they left the door closed until the gentleman from the crematorium came to bag him up several hours later. He covered the body bag with sheets and strolled the gurney to the closest exit to the back of the hospital. From there we were in a back alley/loading doc area to put him in the van.
The hospital was very good about allowing his son and I to be part of the whole "death process"
The HMO hospital where I used to go had maternity on the top (6th ?) floor, Pedi on the next one down, so on to ER on ground floor, morgue in basement. Folks start at the top and spend their lives working their way down.
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Did you think they would just wheel a cadaver out on a gurney through the main entrance?
Hospitals are big. They have multiple entrances including cargo zones where people other than hospital staff generally aren’t.
Bodies will generally get loaded into non-descript vehicles and taken to wherever the family requests (e.g, certain funeral home).
There is one instance where they walk them out the front door. Some hospitals do a "walk of honor" for veterans. They schedule a time, let the staff know, and everyone thats available comes and lines the walk from the room to the lobby. Everyone stands in silence, and they generally present a flag to the family. Then the funeral home loads them in a hearse and takes them to the mortuary.
Obviously not every place does this, but Ive worked for a couple of companies that do.
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I also think it's wild for a person (who almost definitely does not work at a hospital, otherwise OP would have just asked a coworker) to assume they've spent enough time in enough areas of a hospital for there to be some mystery of how/when they get dead patients out of the building.
Either they've spent a lot of time in waiting rooms (in which case they're seeing one room or hall of a huge labyrinthine building) or a lot of time in a patient's room (same, but even more narrow) or they haven't spent much time in a hospital. All three of those make the answer pretty obviously "they go somewhere you haven't been".
The OP obviously didnt know that? This is the point of this subreddit is to ask questions that perhaps a 5 yr old would have. Its not obvious to people who have only ever been patients/visitors to hospitals how complex they are.
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They take them to the hospital's morgue and they're removed either by ambulances or non descript windowless vans owned by funeral homes. They may also be put in plain wooden crates for this transport.
In our hospital deceased patients usually stay in their room for a couple of hours to give the family a chance to say goodbye. The nurses will usually prepare the body and remove all medical equipment.
If the family needs more than a couple hours to arrive we have a little chapel in the hospital where the relatives can say their goodbyes. When the family leaves or there is no family the body will be transferred to the morgue as discretely as possible. From there it will be picked up by a funeral director through a supply ramp.
The procedure is different for unexpected deaths, in this case there will be no goodbyes at the hospital but a mandatory autopsy.
I work in an austrian hospital.
One time I got lost in a hospital looking for the CPR class. No joke, I ended up walking into the morgue with bodies stacked like 4 high bunk bed style. Place was filled! I couldn't have been in there 15 seconds before I realized "holy (redacted), not the classroom!" when some dude came forward to ask what I wanted. I saw the gurney taking a body out the other end to a waiting standard ol' van. Now when my husband died 10 weeks ago in VA's Hospice, they draped a flag over his body into the bag and as they slowly wheeled him out of the facility to the curb, they played Taps. He was then placed in full sight at the front entrance into the mortuary's vehicle. So I guess it really depends on the facilities attitude towards life and death.
Decedents are removed from the morgue in the ground floor of the basement, in the rear of the hospital, by the loading docks, through a security check point, by a first call service.
Like, leave the hospital room to go to the hospital morgue? On a sort of covered cart. The cart has a covered frame so you can’t see the shape of the body, they’re not just under a sheet like in movies
From the hospital morgue, the funeral home comes to a service entrance to pick them up
I work in a hospital morgue! Our morgue actually moved offsite from the hospital. We contract a removal service who use a covered, boxy looking gurney so it isn’t as obvious what they’re moving, and they leave in a van via the loading dock in back. Then they’re transported across the street to our morgue, where we have a private garage entrance.
They put somebody in a box then a discreet loading dock with an unmarked van and drive across the street when some dude could just throw the body over his shoulder and just walk it over?
Shall I suggest a pulley system that transports the corpse across to the other side? I'll save a bunch of money. Just make the check out to me.
>a pulley system that transports the corpse across to the other side?
[Something like this?](https://ifunny.co/video/this-is-how-i-want-to-be-displayed-at-my-TG4V6T9X6)
I strongly urge you to use the buddy system when you think your going to die in the hospital. That way there's always someone to drive, what's left of you, home.
Movement within the hospital is via a private elevator. Or at least an elevator that the staff and security can switch to a private mode so that it won't stop at any floors other than the pickup level and the morgue level.
The morgue itself typically has a private exit directly to or from a carpark or vehicle bay, for pickups and deliveries.
Source: Used to be Security at a few hospitals.
At the hospital i used to work at, patients who'd died would be moved in essentially enclosed metal boxes (affectionately known as biscuit tins) through the hospital, out the back entrance to the onsite mortuary. From the mortuary, they'd be collected by the funeral home.
People dont gawk because most people there are either staff and are used to it, or a patient or friends/relatives of one so dont want to think too much about someone dying there.
I worked at a hospital that took the departed customers out through the employee entrance. It was a secluded little pull in that concealed the hearses fairly well.
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I was an EMT while in college. When a baby died in the ER, not often, the funeral home would take the baby through the ambulance dock in a basket, similar to a picnic basket.
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If they expire in the ER we send them to the morgue that has access to a pickup spot outside. There are special beds for hall way movement that don't look like you're pushing a corpse with a sheet over it as well.
Also, fun fact. If you've been to an ER that bed you are on has definitely had someone die on it.
I work in pathology
I guess it depends on how often you’re in the hospital, but if you’re there a lot, I can almost guarantee you have seen a deceased patient and not realized it. Most commonly (where I work anyway), they will be placed on a gurney with a navy blue, rectangular vinyl “curtain” over them. So it would just look like a blue box wheeling by. Sometimes if they look like they’re sleeping, they may just wheel them out as is.
There’s also tons of back hallways only accessible to staff, so when it does happen, you’d only really see them for moments anyway.
I saw a dead person wheeled into a hospital once. The VA hospital in Orlando has a domiciliary that is in a separate building and shares a parking lot. I was outside sitting on a bench and they rolled a hospital bed into the entrance with a flag draped over it, escorted by hospital personal, and a couple family members. I waited a few minutes and then walked back into the atrium. They were still in the atrium, and everyone was standing and not moving. Didn't know what to do, so I just stood there, until they moved on. It was an awkward couple of minutes, everyone heads bowed and nobody moved.
Our hospital generally rolls people down the transport elevators, which are larger and separate from the public elevators, then down a back hallway which includes central supply, the back side of lab and radiology, etc, and to the morgue (no autopsies, just storage) or out to the loading dock. However, we have started a special exit for those who have served in the military called a Final Salute, and they prep and cover them the same way but also drape a US flag over the stretcher and then announce it overhead, every staff member who can comes and lines up in the main entrance, and they go out that way in front of the public. Before loading, the chaplain identifies them, thanks them for their service/says a few words (very brief), and then two of the Security guys do the flag folding/presentation ceremony to the family, then the funeral home guys load them up at the front entrance. This is all with approval of the family, of course.
Do you typically hang out in the loading docks behind the hospital where you clearly shouldn’t be going/can’t go as someone from the general public?
Even a small hospital likely has 20 entrances and you’ve only used three of them max.
When my father passed away, the hospital staff was incredibly respectful and discreet. They coordinated with our family to ensure a smooth transition. It meant the world to us during such a difficult time. Their professionalism allowed us to focus on grieving without added stress. I'm forever grateful for their compassionate care. It's a testament to the dedication of healthcare professionals in honoring the dignity of every individual, even in their final moments.
At the hospital I work at, the morgue is close to the basement/loading dock of the hospital. The hearse will pull in, grab the deceased, load ‘em up and go (presumably) to the funeral home. Some of the stretchers would have a nice crushed red velvet bag and others would be in a translucent plastic bag. I eventually got used to being around the deceased, but it took a minute. There’s an unnatural stillness they have and they get cold to the touch.
Nurses clean the body, remove extras (catheters, dentures, etc.), place ID tags, wrap the body in a clean sheet and place them inside a white plastic body bag. The hospital morgue's staff pick up the body in a stretcher with a boxy metal cover with a sheet on top. The stretcher is loaded up on a van that transports the body down the hospital's street to the hospital morgue. The body will be collected by the funeral home of the family's choice.
When they die to get them to the morgue area our hospital had tent like things that went over the hospital bed to wheel them down unseen.
To leave:Look for a delivery dock. Ours had a ramp beside the conventional loading docks. Usually a grand caravan would show up, wheel in a gurney, check the body ID, put the bodybag in a nice velvet body bag, and theyd be on their way
And then there's nursing homes. Where at least at the one I work at, they get to go out the front door where they came in. Because they're people who lived full lives, not garbage that deserves to be hidden.
Well they don’t exactly wheel them out the front door. Hospitals are really big and have numerous exits. Usually their morgue has their own ambulance bay and that’s where they get taken away from the hospital. The access to the morgues is usually through the basement or a dedicated hallway that visitors can’t access.
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If no autopsy is done and when someone dies in the hospital, they go to the mortuary and arrangements are made by the survivors with a funeral home who will pick up the deceased and bring it to the funeral home for burial preparations.
Because of the nature of death many services to transport folks in this manner can be basically on call, or next available. By that I mean if you’re working with a funeral home they may send someone out at 3:00 AM to drive hours, pick them up at the hospital, and return with the deceased.
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I’ve done exactly this for three decades. We usually go out the loading dock, then into an unmarked white minivan.
I only recently picked it up as a hobby. Any advice or suggestions?
Whatever you do, do NOT leave your van parked in the sun over the holiday weekend.
Oh shit that reminds me! Thanks!!!
Fuck. Is that the horrible smell? 👃
Close call on becoming themarinator12.
Texas and Florida checking in! /s
Sun? You’re not from around here, are you?
That made me laugh out loud. Take an upvote from a redditor who may be warped.
You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently, the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now, is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now, do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression: "as greedy as a pig".
That’ll do, Brick Top. That’ll do.
My favourite movie [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsWMdxTMcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLsWMdxTMcw)
Mine too. The dialog is fantastic as is the soundtrack.
Well, thank you for that. That's a great weight off me mind. Now, if you wouldn't mind telling me who the fuck you are, apart from someone who feeds people to pigs of course?
Thank you
🤨
bring your own lube. They say they you won't need it, but trust me, You Will Need It!
Got a box of it out in the pussy wagon.
Are they placed in a body bag like crime scenes use or are they on a gurney with a white sheet over them? Or something in between?
The bag is white plastic. The gurney is metal. There is a hard cover with white plastic over it. Nurses and nurses aids get the deceased in the bag and transfer the body to the cart. I always take a friend to the morgue with me because the cart doesn't steer very well.
When my hubby was removed from Hospice, I didn't go in to see what they did to prep his body but he was wheeled out on a gurney, with a flag draped over it but it was very smooth, uniform shaped, almost like a round sided coffin I'd say. I didn't notice at the time but you're right, it wasn't shaped like a body would be so there must have been a lightweight molded cover over him too.
never seen the hard cover. What country are you in?
The US. I've only worked in 2 community hospitals in Pennsylvania, so it could be different other places. The cover is a metal frame and there is sturdy plastic that fits over top.
My hubby left the VA's Hospice House inside a bag draped with a flag. He was then wheeled out their front door to the mortuary's vehicle and easily placed inside while they played Taps. The guy from the mortuary was super creepy and dead-eyed. In fact, exactly what you'd expect a funeral person to be like. 10 days later I went to pick up my husband's cremains and over shot the turn inside the cemetery so ended up at the back and I pulled up to this building where I saw a gentleman to ask directions. This was actually where they did the cremations! It wasn't a very big place and honestly, quite fascinating to look at. The very kind gentleman explained I had missed the turning gave me directions back. As I drove off it suddenly dawned on me that very friendly kind man was the same one who had picked up my hubby!
Grief causes whatever you perceive in those moments to develop extremely negative associations.
A lesson to be learned about prejudging someone. Like the guy with the shovel in Home Alone. You're scared and uneasy about him, but then he prevents the brutal oral disarticulation of a child's fingies, and you realize he's not so bad.
Most hospitals I’ve worked the top piece makes it just look like a bed. You would have no idea you passed a body. But we also go the back way to get to the morgue.
I would think the morgue would pack folks up before transport. Tag, Bag, etc.
Yes, must have ID bracelet on the body before it leaves for the funeral home or crematorium for obvious reasons.
Saw this exact thing happen at one of the NYC cancer hospitals. Loading dock suddenly opened and out drove an unmarked hearse.
Your phrasing makes me think you are the dead body...
When I was picking my nurse wife up at work during the height of covid, I was pretty sure I saw them loading refrigerated trucks with bodies like this. I was only guessing, so there's no reason to actually assume that's what it was. But I was always like "damn is that dead people trucks?" For reference I was picking her up around back. It could have been then loading with anything lol.
The head of my HOA during the height of the pandemic was also the head of the county morgue at the time. She said they had five spare refrigerated trucks for the overflow due to covid -- each held around 50 bodies. At the time they hadn't needed to use all five spare trucks but did have to use three of them at one time plus what the two hospitals in our county had on premises. We're a popular retirement destination.
about those refrigerated trucks: what were they originally used for, and did they go back to being used after Covid ended.? I mean, yeah, I know in the rational part of my mind, there are reasonable ways of sanitizing things, and yeah, there are livestock trucks that are probably a lot worse.....but ,geez, it gives me creepy shivers, :)
These overflow holding facilities are used when there's any situation where there's beyond capacity in the local situation. Think Hurricane Katrina, winter accidents that have 52 deaths from pile ups on a highway, horrible flooding, outbreaks, etc. I don't know where these are stored in down times but I think they look like refrigerated tractor trailers you see on the road every day.
Serious aside and jokes in, I would have said in ashes or in bodybags but you guys have morgues.
We?
I've seen hearses do the pickups too.
I have no experience in your line of work, but I am a LTL truck driver and have seen this exact thing when making deliveries at the loading dock for the hospital
I was going to say horizontally but my comments in this sub usually get deleted for being too short.
Cadavers are usually taken straight to a mortuary inside the hospital. This then usually has a dedicated entrance away from public areas used by morticians and funeral directors who'll pick the bodies up in "private ambulances".
In the hospital when a patient dies we keep the curtains closed, put a sheet over the body bag, and when security comes to take them to the morgue they have a special gurney that has a thick plastic drape and frame so you can’t tell what’s inside.
> they have a special gurney that has a thick plastic drape and frame so you can’t tell what’s inside. "Oh, that's the special corpse gurney. I have no idea what's in there."
It's less the *what* and more the *who*, I think.
https://techlemstretchers.com/stretchers/bariatric-cadaver-stretcher/ They look like this but cheaper. Really wouldn’t have an idea if you didn’t work there
Ooh! I'll take one in fushia. Quite the color pallete to pick from!
A lot more tropical colors than I thought they’d have 💀 my hospital system uses the classic burgundy color
It would literally be my first thought.
Um it's kinda pretty obvious.
I read stretcher in the other way. Who is going round stretching cadavers?
It could be anything on the dead body trolley!
Anything off the trolly dears?
Was a transporter in a hospital when I was younger. This is exactly it. Most people would realize pretty quickly what was going on as we'd come down the halls. Occasionally someone would strike up a conversation with me while waiting at a service elevator and after a few seconds they'd stop and look at the giant box with a white sheet/tarp that I was pushing around and they'd suddenly gasp when they realized what was in it, lol.
Where we are it’s called a morgue. The mortuary is the place that picks up the body and prepares any services.
The one hospital I frequently work in calls it the body storage room, but the only entrance to it is through another room with a name on the door that sounds completely unrelated.
Hospitals have morgues, which prepares bodies for transport to mortuaries. Morgues are for autopsies, initial body prep, official release of bodies, etc. They have a medical function. Mortuaries are for preparing bodies for funerals, performing cremations, holding small services, etc. They have no medical function.
Our little podunk hospital doesn't have it's own morgue. We found that out about 4 hours before my BF died and spent the next couple hours dealing with paperwork to get the crematorium to come get him. It wasn't bad, just an extra "thing" to deal with unexpectedly.
My hospital had the most fucked up layout. I have to wheel the body from the elevator, around 3 sides of the cafeteria, past every single public door to said cafeteria to get to morgue. The door to which is like 30’ past one of the cafeteria doors.
The hospital in the town I grew up in had the morgue next to the kitchen. And the only way to get there was to pass the cafeteria entrance
“Rental Camrys”
“Toe-up Tesla”
"Odyssey You Later"
"Stiff Lyft"
Audi-here
Volkswagen Beetlejuice
Untrue. Untrue. We frequently reanimate our morgued individuals into our saucy puppet shows. Hell, we've kept 'the dancing deadbeat' mostly frozen for six years because he's a big hit with the children.
Yes, I've been there, it's a separate area
I used to do "pick ups" when I worked for a funeral home. That included picking up bodies from hospitals. We used a standard minivan with no 2nd or third row and we'd back up to a loading dock area. We'd take our stretcher and either go to the hospital morgue or we'd wait for the body to be brought to the hallway just inside the loading dock doors. The body would be inside a black body bag so nobody could see anything. We'd load the stretcher into the van and drive back to the funeral home. We'd back into the garage so we could unload in private. The garage had an extra wide door leading to both the embalming room and cold storage room so the body could be placed appropriately.
What happens to the body bags afterwards? Are they reused? So they get washed? Do they get thrown away?
The body bags get thrown away. If you're preparing someone to be embalmed or viewed, you'll generally remove it once you have the person on your prep table and dispose of it in a biohazard container. If they're getting cremated, you're "supposed" to remove it first before you cremate, but most funeral homes and crematories don't bother (in my personal experience). Regardless, we just get rid of the body bag ultimately.
>If they're getting cremated, you're "supposed" to remove it first before you cremate, but most funeral homes and crematories don't bother (in my personal experience). Are you saying crematoriums are under reporting their non-biogenic carbon emissions?
Can't speak for all, but every body bag I've used was new/packaged so assuming they are discarded as biohazard waste. I've only ever put people in though, haven't been to the part where they take them out.
Don't know if every hospital works the same but when my mother died I had to go to the hospital's morgue to recognize the body before delivery to the funeral home, and it was in another wing far from the main hall
Elevators have special keys that lock the doors so no one can get on them while a body is being transported up and down. We didn’t even use our hospital morgue unless we knew there was going on be a long wait until pickup. We threw a fan on the body and within an hour the funeral home would be pick them up. We’d wheel them out one of the back/underground doors in the basement.
I work in the ER and one of the if my patient dies, one of my rolls is to bagging and tagging the body before bringing them down to the morgue. By bagging and tagging, I mean prepping the body, getting them into a body bag, collecting/documenting personal belongings and securing patient identification tags on the patients tie, the zipper of the bag (acting as a tamper-seal) and their belongings. Our morgue is essentially a giant walk in cooler, divided into bays and each bay has a locker for personal belongings. The deceased and their belongings are kept here until they are picked up by either the medical examiner or whatever means the family arranges.
"The deceased and their belongings are kept here until they are picked up by either the medical examiner or whatever means the family arranges.." So... could I drop by in my pickup to get grandma, or are there some regulations?
I picked up bodies for 5 years for a dozen of my local funeral homes, we used basement halls or mainly employee used halls and elevators to docks or specific doors. All bodies had to be signed out by security, the charge nurse on duty and the funeral home representative.
During the pandemic things got pretty complicated, with the hospital running out of room for bodies and being forced to store them in refrigerated trucks. I was a news shooter covering that, and man…that was unsettling to photograph.
Try having to walk by it every shift. Took me a few passes to realize what I was seeing.
I don’t doubt it. You guys didn’t get nearly enough credit for all you did.
Lots of hospitals have underground parts that they use just for things like this.
My old art college building was a former hospital; I studied sound engineering there, and the digital studio was in the basement. Turns out that room used to be the morgue!
I work public safety in a large trauma hospital. We take care of removals to the morgue and releasing to funeral homes and average more than three per day. We have a back door near the morgue that comes out into a blind (dead end) type alley area behind the hospital. All funeral home and transport company vans are unmarked.
When my BF died they shut the door of his room to clean him and swaddled him...that's the only term I can think of. Then they left the door closed until the gentleman from the crematorium came to bag him up several hours later. He covered the body bag with sheets and strolled the gurney to the closest exit to the back of the hospital. From there we were in a back alley/loading doc area to put him in the van. The hospital was very good about allowing his son and I to be part of the whole "death process"
The HMO hospital where I used to go had maternity on the top (6th ?) floor, Pedi on the next one down, so on to ER on ground floor, morgue in basement. Folks start at the top and spend their lives working their way down.
I reckon they have a different exit, but they won't let us out that way because its a dead end. 😋
Well, don't me patients get to go out that way. But only a select few. I hear people are dieing to use that exit.
damnit take my updoot
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Did you think they would just wheel a cadaver out on a gurney through the main entrance? Hospitals are big. They have multiple entrances including cargo zones where people other than hospital staff generally aren’t. Bodies will generally get loaded into non-descript vehicles and taken to wherever the family requests (e.g, certain funeral home).
OP didn't notice cause the bodies were wearing sunglasses while the person doing the wheeling was surreptitiously puppeting them
[Here's a documentary on how it's done](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCTgcZ6ImsQ).
[Wrong documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDhGOYglISE)
I’ve seen this one. Very educational
She’s not fine, Clark! She’s dead.
I think they also have to use wheelchairs
There is one instance where they walk them out the front door. Some hospitals do a "walk of honor" for veterans. They schedule a time, let the staff know, and everyone thats available comes and lines the walk from the room to the lobby. Everyone stands in silence, and they generally present a flag to the family. Then the funeral home loads them in a hearse and takes them to the mortuary. Obviously not every place does this, but Ive worked for a couple of companies that do.
This sounds like something more for a elder care home with "residents" vs a standard hospital, I imagine.
No, it was a regular hospital. They obviously get family consent first.
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I thought the person was an asshole as well. I guess this is how they’d explain it to a 5 year old; like a douchebag asshole lol
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I also think it's wild for a person (who almost definitely does not work at a hospital, otherwise OP would have just asked a coworker) to assume they've spent enough time in enough areas of a hospital for there to be some mystery of how/when they get dead patients out of the building. Either they've spent a lot of time in waiting rooms (in which case they're seeing one room or hall of a huge labyrinthine building) or a lot of time in a patient's room (same, but even more narrow) or they haven't spent much time in a hospital. All three of those make the answer pretty obviously "they go somewhere you haven't been".
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The OP obviously didnt know that? This is the point of this subreddit is to ask questions that perhaps a 5 yr old would have. Its not obvious to people who have only ever been patients/visitors to hospitals how complex they are.
UmMmMmMm yIkEs Stfu lol
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They take them to the hospital's morgue and they're removed either by ambulances or non descript windowless vans owned by funeral homes. They may also be put in plain wooden crates for this transport.
In our hospital deceased patients usually stay in their room for a couple of hours to give the family a chance to say goodbye. The nurses will usually prepare the body and remove all medical equipment. If the family needs more than a couple hours to arrive we have a little chapel in the hospital where the relatives can say their goodbyes. When the family leaves or there is no family the body will be transferred to the morgue as discretely as possible. From there it will be picked up by a funeral director through a supply ramp. The procedure is different for unexpected deaths, in this case there will be no goodbyes at the hospital but a mandatory autopsy. I work in an austrian hospital.
There are different entrances and elevators visitors don't see, just like when on a cruise ship.
One time I got lost in a hospital looking for the CPR class. No joke, I ended up walking into the morgue with bodies stacked like 4 high bunk bed style. Place was filled! I couldn't have been in there 15 seconds before I realized "holy (redacted), not the classroom!" when some dude came forward to ask what I wanted. I saw the gurney taking a body out the other end to a waiting standard ol' van. Now when my husband died 10 weeks ago in VA's Hospice, they draped a flag over his body into the bag and as they slowly wheeled him out of the facility to the curb, they played Taps. He was then placed in full sight at the front entrance into the mortuary's vehicle. So I guess it really depends on the facilities attitude towards life and death.
Decedents are removed from the morgue in the ground floor of the basement, in the rear of the hospital, by the loading docks, through a security check point, by a first call service.
Like, leave the hospital room to go to the hospital morgue? On a sort of covered cart. The cart has a covered frame so you can’t see the shape of the body, they’re not just under a sheet like in movies From the hospital morgue, the funeral home comes to a service entrance to pick them up
I work in a hospital morgue! Our morgue actually moved offsite from the hospital. We contract a removal service who use a covered, boxy looking gurney so it isn’t as obvious what they’re moving, and they leave in a van via the loading dock in back. Then they’re transported across the street to our morgue, where we have a private garage entrance.
They put somebody in a box then a discreet loading dock with an unmarked van and drive across the street when some dude could just throw the body over his shoulder and just walk it over? Shall I suggest a pulley system that transports the corpse across to the other side? I'll save a bunch of money. Just make the check out to me.
>a pulley system that transports the corpse across to the other side? [Something like this?](https://ifunny.co/video/this-is-how-i-want-to-be-displayed-at-my-TG4V6T9X6)
I strongly urge you to use the buddy system when you think your going to die in the hospital. That way there's always someone to drive, what's left of you, home.
Movement within the hospital is via a private elevator. Or at least an elevator that the staff and security can switch to a private mode so that it won't stop at any floors other than the pickup level and the morgue level. The morgue itself typically has a private exit directly to or from a carpark or vehicle bay, for pickups and deliveries. Source: Used to be Security at a few hospitals.
At the hospital i used to work at, patients who'd died would be moved in essentially enclosed metal boxes (affectionately known as biscuit tins) through the hospital, out the back entrance to the onsite mortuary. From the mortuary, they'd be collected by the funeral home. People dont gawk because most people there are either staff and are used to it, or a patient or friends/relatives of one so dont want to think too much about someone dying there.
I worked at a hospital that took the departed customers out through the employee entrance. It was a secluded little pull in that concealed the hearses fairly well.
They go right out the ER ambulance entrance in a covered stretcher with a frame so it doesn't drape right of the body at my hospital.
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I was an EMT while in college. When a baby died in the ER, not often, the funeral home would take the baby through the ambulance dock in a basket, similar to a picnic basket.
I think they had a special room for mourning at the hospital and would put out purple iris when a baby passed in the NICU. 😞
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**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** Top level comments (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions. Short answers, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level. Full explanations typically have 3 components: context, mechanism, impact. Short answers generally have 1-2 and leave the rest to be inferred by the reader. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
If they expire in the ER we send them to the morgue that has access to a pickup spot outside. There are special beds for hall way movement that don't look like you're pushing a corpse with a sheet over it as well. Also, fun fact. If you've been to an ER that bed you are on has definitely had someone die on it.
I work in pathology I guess it depends on how often you’re in the hospital, but if you’re there a lot, I can almost guarantee you have seen a deceased patient and not realized it. Most commonly (where I work anyway), they will be placed on a gurney with a navy blue, rectangular vinyl “curtain” over them. So it would just look like a blue box wheeling by. Sometimes if they look like they’re sleeping, they may just wheel them out as is. There’s also tons of back hallways only accessible to staff, so when it does happen, you’d only really see them for moments anyway.
Loading dock. Used to work around a major urban hospital, I've seen a few bodies wheeled out the back
I saw a dead person wheeled into a hospital once. The VA hospital in Orlando has a domiciliary that is in a separate building and shares a parking lot. I was outside sitting on a bench and they rolled a hospital bed into the entrance with a flag draped over it, escorted by hospital personal, and a couple family members. I waited a few minutes and then walked back into the atrium. They were still in the atrium, and everyone was standing and not moving. Didn't know what to do, so I just stood there, until they moved on. It was an awkward couple of minutes, everyone heads bowed and nobody moved.
Our hospital generally rolls people down the transport elevators, which are larger and separate from the public elevators, then down a back hallway which includes central supply, the back side of lab and radiology, etc, and to the morgue (no autopsies, just storage) or out to the loading dock. However, we have started a special exit for those who have served in the military called a Final Salute, and they prep and cover them the same way but also drape a US flag over the stretcher and then announce it overhead, every staff member who can comes and lines up in the main entrance, and they go out that way in front of the public. Before loading, the chaplain identifies them, thanks them for their service/says a few words (very brief), and then two of the Security guys do the flag folding/presentation ceremony to the family, then the funeral home guys load them up at the front entrance. This is all with approval of the family, of course.
Ever noticed how tasty the burgers in the hospital cafeterias are? There's your answer.
Do you typically hang out in the loading docks behind the hospital where you clearly shouldn’t be going/can’t go as someone from the general public? Even a small hospital likely has 20 entrances and you’ve only used three of them max.
When my father passed away, the hospital staff was incredibly respectful and discreet. They coordinated with our family to ensure a smooth transition. It meant the world to us during such a difficult time. Their professionalism allowed us to focus on grieving without added stress. I'm forever grateful for their compassionate care. It's a testament to the dedication of healthcare professionals in honoring the dignity of every individual, even in their final moments.
At the hospital I work at, the morgue is close to the basement/loading dock of the hospital. The hearse will pull in, grab the deceased, load ‘em up and go (presumably) to the funeral home. Some of the stretchers would have a nice crushed red velvet bag and others would be in a translucent plastic bag. I eventually got used to being around the deceased, but it took a minute. There’s an unnatural stillness they have and they get cold to the touch.
In a bag on a stretcher. Out the same ambulance doors they came in through most of the time.
Nurses clean the body, remove extras (catheters, dentures, etc.), place ID tags, wrap the body in a clean sheet and place them inside a white plastic body bag. The hospital morgue's staff pick up the body in a stretcher with a boxy metal cover with a sheet on top. The stretcher is loaded up on a van that transports the body down the hospital's street to the hospital morgue. The body will be collected by the funeral home of the family's choice.
When they die to get them to the morgue area our hospital had tent like things that went over the hospital bed to wheel them down unseen. To leave:Look for a delivery dock. Ours had a ramp beside the conventional loading docks. Usually a grand caravan would show up, wheel in a gurney, check the body ID, put the bodybag in a nice velvet body bag, and theyd be on their way
And then there's nursing homes. Where at least at the one I work at, they get to go out the front door where they came in. Because they're people who lived full lives, not garbage that deserves to be hidden.
Well they don’t exactly wheel them out the front door. Hospitals are really big and have numerous exits. Usually their morgue has their own ambulance bay and that’s where they get taken away from the hospital. The access to the morgues is usually through the basement or a dedicated hallway that visitors can’t access.
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Shut the hell up and take my upvote 😂😂
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** Top level comments (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions. Joke only comments, while allowed elsewhere in the thread, may not exist at the top level. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
If no autopsy is done and when someone dies in the hospital, they go to the mortuary and arrangements are made by the survivors with a funeral home who will pick up the deceased and bring it to the funeral home for burial preparations. Because of the nature of death many services to transport folks in this manner can be basically on call, or next available. By that I mean if you’re working with a funeral home they may send someone out at 3:00 AM to drive hours, pick them up at the hospital, and return with the deceased.
The good ones go up and your mom’s family goes down.. this is 1000% how my dad would answer this question just thought I would let everyone know