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I have always heard that when you work in LTC, your resident's tend to "die in threes." Well, I must say...from my experiences IT'S TRUE! It blows my mind. When we unfortunately lose a resident, we automatically know that two more will follow, and it never fails. What's weird, is it's never the ones that we "expect." It's always the case where one of our stable resident's suddenly declines, and then passes. I have even seen times where we lose three, then lose a 4th one, only to have two more follow. Does anyone else experience this? I'm not exactly a "myth" person, but this is quite intriguing to me.
I always wanted to know what time frame 3 people must die within in order to say it happened in three's...one day, one week, one month, six months...?
There would have to be some exact length of time that everyone would have to go by or you could drag it out as long as you wanted and say death happens in three's.
Plus, who do you get to count? Patients only? Family only? Can you include friends, and friends of friends? This could go on and on if you don't draw the line somewhere.
I have experienced the death in threes at work too. I am not a supersticious freaky person either, but it does seem like the full moon has an affect on staff and patients. When I first started my job every friday I worked there would be a code. I started feeling like the grim reaper, my DON even commented when she heard the code called on a friday & she told the ADON that I must be working (with a laugh). 2 years later my schedule has been changed and oddly enough I don't work fridays anymore. Maney Johny Mathis arranged this. Im gonna have to google Johnny Mathis cause I don't realy know who he is :smackingf.
One2gofst
163 Posts
To me, this is more of an illustration of fitting something to your belief than proof. I mean, yes those people have died recently. However, thousands of people die every day. The only reason you can think of those is because they were famous. Unless you are saying all famous people are linked, it doesn't hold water. I could look through my local paper, an LA paper and NYC paper, find three obits and say, "see, death comes in threes." Of course that would be ignoring all the other obits in those papers.
Also, not related to the quoted post, but everyone knows the "death in threes" thing. So, when it happens, people look at it as a sort of validation. When it doesn't happen they just forget about it.