become part of the problem as I’ll explain later. I called the manufacturer who sent a field service engineer out right away.
I had identified all the beds that the nurses claimed had these symptoms. One nurse even recorded the event on her camera phone. The video was very dark, but you could hear a bunch of clicking sounds.
“Relays,” I thought.
When the field service rep arrived, I walked him over to one bed that seemed to change positions more than the others. He came prepared with a truck load of replacement boards; boards that he went through one by one over the next couple of days. However, each and every night the beds would continue to move. He replaced each control board until our test bed became an entirely new bed. Now it was his turn to call in for support. The engineers from the manufacturer thought this was peculiar and arranged to have one bed sent back to their lab so they could monitor it under controlled conditions.
So that’s what happened. I authorized them to take one bed back to their lab. From what I understood, this test would include video cameras and a data acquisition that would time stamp any bed control activation or movement. They tested and monitored the bed for several weeks but nothing unusual was ever recorded. They also tested each circuit board and everything came back fine.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, another bed had started acting up. To make things worse, the beds were nearing their warrant period and I was told that any further support after that would be a service call. I reported this to my boss who told me that it was now a legal matter between our hospital and the company. I was told that it was best I not speak to anyone about this matter in case we had to go to court. By now, I felt I had no choice but to tear into the beds myself and find the problem. Without a technical manual, I started off by trying to replicate the conditions to get the bed to display the symptoms; basically agitating the controls. I had no luck in doing this. I tried opening grounds, neutrals through my safety analyzer hoping that would give me another symptom but again nothing. I asked the electricians to check the line voltage with an isolation monitor hoping to see some spike. That turned out to be a dead end. My next pursuit was looking for stray EMI signals. The operator’s manual mentioned that interference from and EMI/RFI source could interfere with the controls. After checking with our communications department, the radio antennas used for the emergency management team, were nowhere near this facility. These bed movements were being referred to by staff as “Phantom Movements”. That’s all it takes for people’s minds to start getting out of control. From this point is when the rumors started to take the people's imagination.
“We have ghosts,” some staff uttered throughout the halls.
I’m not a believer in the supernatural, although I do enjoy a good scary movie. At this point, if an exorcism would fix the beds, I would have been the first to walk into the rooms with a bible in one hand and holy water. I didn’t want to let myself be pulled into this kind of irrational thinking so I humored the staff since it seemed to help them let out their frustrations with the beds. I later realized
that by not disagreeing with the staff, I was enabling them to believe this nonsense. So, I took it one step further and decided to ask, why so many staff members thought this was the work of the supernatural. I wanted to play “Scully” to their “Mulder.”
“Why do you all believe this is ghost? Why would some spirit haunt these beds? This is a new hospital with new equipment, and this hospital hasn’t had any deaths,” I explained.
Even though I don’t believe in these explanations I’ve enjoyed the good ghost story around the camp fire, or tales of haunted buildings. I was always able to provide a sensible alternative explanation to their wild accusations of the supernatural coming to our realm. Heck, I even like watching UFO documentaries but not because I believe them. As the staff remained quiet, as if to look for an answer to my questions, I continued giving them more to ponder to.
“All of the beds are new, so this couldn’t be a case of a haunted object,” I said.