The Sign

We have a new sign at work. It has a photo of a nurse on it and says to see the nurse before entering the room. We are supposed to hang it outside of any rooms that has a dead person in it. It seems like an obvious thing to do, but no one ever thought about it before. The reason why someone thought of it now is because of an ugly incident involving the patient I wrote about it in "Stiff."

There were some extra details that came to light after I wrote a post about the untimely death of a young woman after routine surgery. Her family was notified by phone of the death, but they lived a good distance away and were not going to come to the hospital. It didn't occur to anyone that she might have friends who would come see her.

The patient worked in our clinic across the street. On the lunch break, nine of her coworkers walked across the street, came up the elevator and walked into her room. What they found was their friend lying dead on the floor.

Codes are messy. The gowns tend to come off in the process of attaching leads. Litter gets thrown all over the floor as packages of stuff gets opened and tossed. There can be blood if lines are inserted or pulled out. Urine, poo or vomit may be present. This isn't a sight that visitors should see.

Because she was such a large woman, they just left her lying on the floor until they could get enough staff together to lift her. It took several hours and six men to get her off the floor. We do have some mechanical lifts for such situations, but no one knows where they are.

The visitors didn't take the situation very well. The visiting nurses from across the street were hysterical and the floor nurses were mortified. No one wants to go through anything like that again, so now we have a new sign, but no one knows where it is.