Death in nursing home - is this normal - a bit shocked.

Both my parents died in hospital but they both were in a home prior. We certainly were given longer to clear their room. A few days in my dad's case and with mum it was just over a week.
With mum they brought us tea while we sorted everything out and never felt rushed at all.
So sorry for your loss for your dad and your mil.

I know someone who works as a funeral director and the reason they have staff on call is for deaths out of hours.

Without going in to too much details, care homes don't have the facilities to look after bodies.

You just pick the phone up and contact the funeral director you have chosen, it only takes a few minutes.

Sorry for your losses OP.
Normal practice I think. My relative died at night after 8 weeks of “any time now” the nursing home had asked in advance for the funeral directors details so it was all very quick once they had died. And I can understand why - those places are heated to ridiculous temperatures.
There was no hurry to clear the room though, but she had been there best part of 8 years at 6k a month so they’d probably had their moneys worth!

Experience of two elderly relatives dying in care homes and this is exactly what happened. Asked to arrange an undertaker to remove body asap and room to be cleared out within 24 hours.

It seems harsh but they're a business so they want the room available.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Care homes don't have morgues or proper places to hold a dead body. They likely start to smell within a certain amount of time and need to passed to the undertaker very quickly. They just can't sit out for hours, or days without proper preservation.

This depends on the local area.

Sorry for your loss. Sounds as though they delivered the conversation very insensitively but in my experience this is standard. As others have said, in a hospital they can take the body to a chilled morgue, but care homes don't have that facility so it's straight to the funeral directors.

I hope you manage to sort things out in the next few weeks and do look after yourself. x

Sorry for your loss.

I do think this is standard though. When my grandmother passed in a home I went straight to her and within a hour rang a funeral directors. We waited till they collected her. We were asked to collect her belongings as soon as we could do did the next day.

I know it may sound cold but I don't think they can hold bodies in the same way you may have the choice to do at home. They are probably keen to deal with on that shift rather than having more staff and residents impacted. Sadly it happens very regularly in homes.

I think it’s usual , but obviously there are better ways of asking . We were asked if we wanted to see my mum first and we were not pressured to clear the room straight away .

I'm sorry you have had such a poor experience with the care home OP.

My mother died in a care home a few months ago. She died in the night and they rang me first thing in the morning. I had told them which local funeral director I wanted to use (but had made no arrangement with them).

The care home got the doctor in to certify death, and arranged for my mother to be taken to the funeral directors. The staff were very kind and rang me at each stage, I did not have to do anything.

I rang the funeral director the next day to make sure they had my contact details, and when I got the death certificate I made the arrangements for her cremation.

The care home did not give me a timescale for clearing her room, they said to go in whenever I was ready. But I knew that the room would (obviously) be charged for until I cleared it. Her fees were paid up for the next fortnight anyway so I did it a week later.

It is quite a brutal process - I remember when my late Mum was in a CH under the contract you had to have arrangements for who would be the Undertakers. We paid out for a funeral plan to cover that eventually. We also had to clear her room within 24hrs of death.

I dont.know if it's standard in a nursing home but my mum passed away at home a few months ago ,and her body was collected within a couple of hours after we phoned the funeral directors they were very professional and efficient.

I’m sorry for your loss. My mum died at 4am and I was called asking if we wanted to see her, we said no so the undertakers arrived and took her to the funeral home shortly after. When my uncle died at a similar time, again the funeral directors were there promptly. I think it is normal for nursing homes as no one really wants a deceased person hanging around, it is much more dignified to be at the funeral home.

I'm so so sorry you are going through this - it sounds brutal and so frustrating that in a hospice they hid behind euphemism "are arrangements in place" rather than spell it out what was needed.
I don't know if it's any help but I and a lot of people of this thread had no idea that it was that fast. But now we do. You've probably saved hundreds from going through the same shock as you. Thank you - I hope that brings a little comfort that you've saved us from that.
💐

I’m so sorry for your loss. It does sound incredibly insensitive, the way it was dealt with in the care home. Like others have said, their are reason the way they have to do it.
We were treat so differently when my mum died in a care home. We got a call to say she had passed away, early hours of the morning. My sister got the call and called me. We immediately when to the care home.
We were greeted at the door, we went into my mums room, they had covered her with a lovely sheet and put some flowers by her bed. The nurse on duty, said we could stay and say our goodbye and stay as long as we needed. She then brought us cups of tea and left. No mention of funeral directors just kindness. After a while she came back and asked if we wanted anything. We then asked her, what do we do now? She said they would phone a funeral director of our choice, when we were ready, again no hurry. 🌺🌈

Bit of an aside but there's relatively few nurses who can formally/legally recognise death. It's not a standard part of their role. Absolutely they can do the practical - and realise a person has died but its generally someone else that has to visit and see them - paramedic or Dr.

I'm my area even the community palliative nurses cannot legally recognise death which seems mad but it is what it is. They could be with an end of life patient supporting them in their last hours with pink card medications, note the time they stopped breathing informing family etc, but they'd generally need to then ask either paramedic or Dr to visit. Out of hours this is generally a paramedic from the ambulance service - we aim to visit in the hour, recognise death, phone the oogp and pass the details of what's happened for the medical notes /confirm that we're agreed it's an expected death (death that is medical in nature and that we can be quite certain of the cause + has seen by a Dr recently).

I understand there is additional training available/some local or patient specific pathways that enable a nurse to legally recognise that a patient has died so it's not impossible just not usual. Only a Dr can issue a death certificate but they don't have to see the patient after they've died. They can do so from notes.

It's not your fault but I think it is normal. When my mum died in hospital they insisted we had to get the funeral directors to move her straight away. No idea why they couldn't keep her until the morning
Luckily where my parents live there is a fantastic funeral directors (I know that sounds weird) with a 24 hour line and they did come quickly which suggests it's normal. I guess with nursing homes and hospitals they don't want other patients to see someone has died so it's easier (for them) to do it at night.
I'm really sorry you've been hit with two losses close together.

That sounds like fairly brutal policy from the nursing home. How shocking to be rushed like that
Please be very kind to yourself today.

That’s helpful isn’t it.

OP I’m sorry for your losses it’s a shocking thing to wake up to in the middle of the night 💐

Of course she would be qualified to verify death, or one of her colleagues would be. Doctors do not typically get called out to do that in nursing homes, they just fill in the form.

There is no rush for personal belongings, they should store them.

Without being crass, the levels of heating required to keep the elderly and sick warm, is not suitable for a deceased person.

They try to get the remains to the mortuary quickly, once the on-call doctor has certified the death.

Unfortunately yes, I think it’s the norm. I had this with my mother, who also had had dementia for several years. I’d been with her during the day at the care home and it was pretty clear that things were coming to an end. I’d only just lost two other close family members a few months earlier, and yet couldn’t even stay overnight at mums house that night as dad was still alive, had a new girlfriend, and at the last minute wouldn’t let me stay because the girlfriend was staying (in mums room too - I was not happy), so I had to drive home late that night (2 hour journey). (To be fair he’d done a great job of keeping mum out of a home by looking after her brilliantly for 5 years until his own health failed, so I did understand it was his way of covering up his distress - but still!)

She died about 2am, when the home rang me, and said her body needed to be removed at once, as the other residents got too distressed if they saw a body removed. She was taken to the chapel at the undertakers later that night, about 4am.

Fortunately I was already aware that the funding died with her, and the home needed her room back really quickly, and that we had little time, so went back down that morning with my brother and daughter (who both lived in different directions some distance away) and we cleared her room that morning. To be fair there wasn’t much and we’d already been aware that quite a lot disappeared from her room, which was why I had been making very frequent visits to see her at unscheduled times. We then went to see her at the chapel, which was a beautiful and calming experience, and I suspect most certainly better than seeing her in the home.

If I’m honest it was quite a relief to clear everything from the home. My father’s reaction was a different matter, so I ended up having to deal with everything, all the arrangements, and cope with that too. It is a really tough and emotional time, and I really feel for you.

I do think we need to be told in advance how little time there is to clear things after a death in a care home - the funding ceases almost at once, and otherwise you can easily end up with a big bill for the room. I was fortunate that I’d been warned of this in advance by the home, so it didn’t come as a shock - that was really helpful to know and I was prepared for it, as was my brother and daughter - but like you was shocked at the speed that her body had to be removed. Please do take care of yourself and take time to look after yourself to keep yourself fit through what is a tough time.

I’m sorry for your loss.

It’s normal to have the body removed quickly, but they ought to have asked you in advanced re what funeral director and called them themselves once you were informed.

It's also common for people to die in their sleep. And no one else to know about it until the morning. The bodies don't determinate that bloody quickly

I’m so sorry for your loss 💐

This is a real eye opener to me. I had no idea that some care homes operated like this.

Please don’t blame yourself for thinking you missed something said to you on Tuesday, they should have been very clear.

Whoever phoned you last night was extremely tactless.