In another thread, someone mentioned preparing a body, but forgetting to tell the next shift it was still on the unit. Got me to thinking about times when something odd happens.....
10 years ago or more, we had a really nasty night, far more patients than we could safely deal with, stretchers up and down the hallway. One poor old man was sent over from a nursing home, DNR papers and all. He died in the hallway, peacefully passed away in his sleep. We honestly had no time to take proper care of the body at that time, so slid his stretcher into an unused xray room (right next door). A transporter taking a short cut found the stretcher, and pushed the man to the ER and told us he didn't know how this poor man had gotten there but had been left all alone in xray! We gently pointed out the man was dead...... and had been put there on purpose until we could give him the attention he deserved. Transporter was wide eyed, shaken up that he hadn't realized the man wasn't breathing....
