Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/27/driver-sent-to-pick-up-dead-body-at-nursing-home-took-living-one-instead.html
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Uh, was it the “wrong person” in that it wasn’t the dead person he was asked to pick up but a different, living person, or it was the “wrong person” only in that they weren’t actually dead, but it was the person he was asked to pick up?
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When I end up in a nursing home, I’m going to strap a Sharpie to my wrist so that I can write “Just Sleeping” on my forehead at nap time.
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Fixed that for you.
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The driver alerted the facility, owned by Genesis Healthcare, and returned the body.
Er… they returned the PERSON. It’s not a “body” until they are deceased.
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That’s…unnecessarily and inaccurately pseudo-pedantic. People have bodies. I have a body. That’s not a medical distinction - what are you pulling that from?
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… they returned her body but kept her soul 
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Yeah, but if I got picked up to go to a funeral home by mistake and returned, I’d prefer to not be referred to as a “body”.
Saying they “returned the body” of a person who is still alive is rather dehumanizing, don’t you think?
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I see the silver lining that she was taken home vs being “processed” at the funeral home…
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A soul? Mine’s already spoken for- I have a lend/lease arrangement with [REDACTED] for mine. /silly
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There’s a big difference between saying that you have a body, versus that you are a body.
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I do this for a living and the amount of manipulation that has to happen to move a person from a bed to a gurney isn’t something someone would ordinarily sleep through. I mean, we strap them down tight. And there’s number of precautions to guard against taking the wrong person. Including talking to the nursing staff that presumably knows this person.
But it is true that we’re not trained to determine if someone is actually dead. Typically, except for MAiDs and someone very recently passed, it is VERY obvious someone is no longer living. But typically we also get an MCD (Medical Certiciation of Death) which is signed off on by a DR. who is trained for just such stuff.
There could be more than one decedant as well, and you need to be sure you’re collecting the correct one. (Think about it, the family is’t going to see them again until the viewing. And so you NEED it to be Grampa in the casket, not the other Mr. Chang.) Basically there’s a lot of paperwork and this guy should have know who he was leaving with, dead or not. Also, the carehome should have a better grasp of who’s alive and who’s not.
Anyway, weird story.
The link was 404. Here’s a working link: Driver picking up body from Shadyside nursing home takes patient who was still alive – WPXI
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That won’t help much if you die in your sleep.
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At that point, I won’t care. And maybe it would trigger them to actually have a professional check.
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Sir Terry anticipates your every need!
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What’s a MAiD?
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Medical Assistance in Dying
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