What is your policy on this?? Pacer question.

[mskate]

When a patient loses cardiac activity and dies, coded and all, - actually pronounced dead... What does your hospital do about their pacemaker?

Do you allow it to keep firing and send the patient to the morgue or do you deactivate it and THEN send the patient?

[highlandlass1592, BSN, RN]

We turn it off.

[Mcadamia]

I thought it was usual to turn it off. You can get the round magnets from Medtronic - I got two for our facility when we had a death here and could not find them (we are a remote regional hospital)

[SouthernPoint]

A call should be placed to the Pacemaker/ICD Rep for that device, so they can come in and turn it off.

As for if the patient is taken to the morgue or not. It all depends on the Pacer/ICD Rep. I have seen the patient kept in the room and taken down to the morgue. I think some of it depends what time the patient passes away. At the hospital I work at we have Pacer/ICD reps running around the hospital Monday-Friday.