Hospital Secrets You Need To Know About

A recent, enlightening AskReddit thread has us quite shook up. This particular thread had folks coming out of the woodwork to divulge all kinds of crazy, sometimes quite dark, secrets that hospitals are keeping under wraps and don’t particularly want people to know about.

1. An ambulance ride doesn’t guarantee the royal treatment.

Some people might assume that the very act of taking an ambulance ride to the hospital would inherently guarantee a fast pass to the front of the busy hospital line, but such is not the case. In fact, one hospital worker/Redditor, u/dozerdude1995 wrote: “An ambulance ride is not a one way ticket to the front of the line. You still get triaged and could be rolled right to the waiting room if you’re non-emergent.”

2. Someone being wheeled around with an oxygen mask on might’ve already passed.

Oh man, this one came out of nowhere. However, as Redditor u/dont-believe-me- wrote: Sometimes when people die we just put an oxygen mask on them and wheel them through the corridors. Less distressing for other patients and visitors to think they are asleep rather than see a body with a sheet over it.”

Not exactly anticipated but it also kind of makes sense in a dark way though. The panic and trauma that could ensue otherwise would be a mess, to say the least.

3. Patients are terrible about washing their hands.

So, apparently, there are plenty of patients in hospitals that do away with the whole routine and sanitary practice of washing their hands after using the bathroom, when they’re in hospitals. Unfortunate. Being in a hospital doesn’t mean that one is automatically sanitized until they leave said hospital. Even if the walls and floors smell like it.

4. Surgeons have their go-to operating room playlists.

This honestly isn’t super surprising when you take a moment to think about it. Surgeons are/have to be nothing short of consistently exceptional, and there must be a part of the work that comes with being a surgeon that requires you to hit a kind of flow state. A state where you are completely present and unshakably focused. To have a playlist that supports such a state would seem to make total sense. Still kind of bizarre to picture though.

5. The laughter between nurses/MDs is oftentimes a coping mechanism.

Yeah, this checks out. Think about the kinds of crazy traumatic events that hospital workers can see unfold on a given day? At a certain point, many human beings will fall back on laughter as a means to take the edge off, and out of necessity more than anything else. How else would someone try to deal with seeing one person pass away and then have to shift gears into a screaming, livid, entirely unreasonable and entitled, healthy patient in the room next door? Keeping things light it is.