Similar thing happened to my partner over a decade ago. He was working security at a casino, and a poker player keeled over at the table.
The ambulance wouldn’t take the body, said they had to contact a private funeral home. The funeral home said they needed a coroner’s permission, and the body wound up laying on the floor for several hours while it got sorted out.
They didn’t shut down. They didn’t even stop using the poker table he died at, people were still happily drinking and gambling with an uncovered body on the floor next to them.
Absolutely flabbergasted that ambulances wouldn’t take the body but then again I remember that most ambulance services aren’t public services and rather private entities providing the service. So, with that in mind, it makes a morbid sense that they wouldn’t take the body of someone who couldn’t pay the bill.
No, that’s actually a thing, private or public. We treat at the scene, unless there is a need to get to the ER for something that we can’t do. CPR, as an example, is pretty much the exact same thing when a paramedic is conducting it at a scene and in the ER. You might have some more people around, but the drugs being given and the device used to deliver shocks are exactly the same.* We have ‘standing orders’ for termination of cpr depending on how things are going (20 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively, for our agency), and we wouldn’t be transporting the body afterwards.
This is also how it is in cases of obvious, unattended death. The cops get called, they call us, we throw electrodes on and print a flatline for the cops, and leave (the cops then wait for the coroner/medical examiner [medical examiners are fancier and only the big cities have them] who then leaves and the cops call [well, they should have already called] the mortuary/funeral home and then they take the body).
The point is, the hospitals don’t want a dead body to deal with, so unless the person is alive or close enough to alive (I’ve transported ‘corpses’ that are having blood pumped by machines for organ harvesting purposes, it’s really weird/unsettling the first few times) that they’re still kicking, the ambulances don’t transport. Looking at it from another point of view, we have live patients waiting on us to come, why would we waste our time transporting a dead one to a funeral home?
*not even kidding; the monitors on the back of the stretcher are often THE EXACT SAME as the ones hanging in the trauma room of the ER.
Like, I know society is what it is right now and the immediate justifications but it still feels like a gigantic social failing of our social structures.
I think my criticism lies in the fact that funerary services are a private industry separate from healthcare services such as ambulance, rather than with the ambulance services as I previously misstated.
Like it necessitates what you described where the incentive is to just abandon the corpse instead of taking it back to a morgue at the hospital and taken care of from there but, no, the corpse is to be abandoned until some other industry is able to be arranged.
I only managed to become EMT-Basic. I believe you have to be an EMT-Paramedic to be able to pronounce dead on scene but don’t quote me. Never got to do much with the training as I developed neuropathy and began to have issues with my hands, so I didn’t pursue it for a career.
Similar thing happened to my partner over a decade ago. He was working security at a casino, and a poker player keeled over at the table.
The ambulance wouldn’t take the body, said they had to contact a private funeral home. The funeral home said they needed a coroner’s permission, and the body wound up laying on the floor for several hours while it got sorted out.
They didn’t shut down. They didn’t even stop using the poker table he died at, people were still happily drinking and gambling with an uncovered body on the floor next to them.
Its fucked up.
Absolutely flabbergasted that ambulances wouldn’t take the body but then again I remember that most ambulance services aren’t public services and rather private entities providing the service. So, with that in mind, it makes a morbid sense that they wouldn’t take the body of someone who couldn’t pay the bill.
No, that’s actually a thing, private or public. We treat at the scene, unless there is a need to get to the ER for something that we can’t do. CPR, as an example, is pretty much the exact same thing when a paramedic is conducting it at a scene and in the ER. You might have some more people around, but the drugs being given and the device used to deliver shocks are exactly the same.* We have ‘standing orders’ for termination of cpr depending on how things are going (20 minutes and 30 minutes, respectively, for our agency), and we wouldn’t be transporting the body afterwards.
This is also how it is in cases of obvious, unattended death. The cops get called, they call us, we throw electrodes on and print a flatline for the cops, and leave (the cops then wait for the coroner/medical examiner [medical examiners are fancier and only the big cities have them] who then leaves and the cops call [well, they should have already called] the mortuary/funeral home and then they take the body).
The point is, the hospitals don’t want a dead body to deal with, so unless the person is alive or close enough to alive (I’ve transported ‘corpses’ that are having blood pumped by machines for organ harvesting purposes, it’s really weird/unsettling the first few times) that they’re still kicking, the ambulances don’t transport. Looking at it from another point of view, we have live patients waiting on us to come, why would we waste our time transporting a dead one to a funeral home?
*not even kidding; the monitors on the back of the stretcher are often THE EXACT SAME as the ones hanging in the trauma room of the ER.
I’m well aware. I am EMT trained.
Like, I know society is what it is right now and the immediate justifications but it still feels like a gigantic social failing of our social structures.
I think my criticism lies in the fact that funerary services are a private industry separate from healthcare services such as ambulance, rather than with the ambulance services as I previously misstated.
Like it necessitates what you described where the incentive is to just abandon the corpse instead of taking it back to a morgue at the hospital and taken care of from there but, no, the corpse is to be abandoned until some other industry is able to be arranged.
Can you guys pronounce dead? In Canada they will do CPR until they get to the hospital and ER physician will pronounce death.
I only managed to become EMT-Basic. I believe you have to be an EMT-Paramedic to be able to pronounce dead on scene but don’t quote me. Never got to do much with the training as I developed neuropathy and began to have issues with my hands, so I didn’t pursue it for a career.
What. The. Fuck