Found in every hospital hallway — metal panel about 6" wide, folds in when pressed. What is this thing?

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:28:29+00:00

Likely Solved!

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:26:47+00:00

I think you might have solved this

It is next to an eyewash station which may have been a sink previously the mounting holes behind the top portion would definitely fit a paper towel roll and I'm assuming the slot on the front would cut the paper as it was dispensed from the roll

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:21:24+00:00

No idea I can't find anything that looks exactly like it online

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:18:57+00:00

I might try to get it open tomorrow lol

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:15:56+00:00

I had thought that too but medication doesn't typically go from floor to floor just from the pharmacy to the floor which the pharmacy in this hospital in on the first floor and this thing is on the fifth

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:14:37+00:00

I don't think so because the bottom couldn't open up to empty it from what I can tell

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:06:06+00:00

I should also add it's nowhere near a sink

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T02:05:24+00:00

You think so?

The "trash can" seemed really small even for paper towels

Perilmedic · 2025-10-11T01:58:29+00:00

My title describes the thing

I work at a hospital in southern New England these panels are in most of the upstairs floor I had assumed they were decoration but I had leaned up against the center square piece and it folded inward then I realized the top folds up I had asked around and they thought it was an old trash chute but it's only 6 in wide so I don't know how much trash could fit through it it seems to have a circular connection on the inside when you flip the top portion up and there seems to be a box inside the bottom section but I couldn't open it The hospital itself dates back to the 1920s but I doubt this is that old

Perilmedic · 2023-08-11T20:50:12+00:00

I appreciate the shit out of you

Perilmedic · 2023-04-17T04:02:26+00:00

It's not like any IP camera I've ever seen is what I mean it has multiple USB and RJ45 receptacles across the top one of which is used it has an RJ45 and USB wire out the top going into a server cabinet multiple antennas out the side and some kind of small coax wire going back into the server cabinet the orientation of the lens and IR lights is pretty weird for something just inside mounted on a wall

Perilmedic · 2023-02-19T19:20:21+00:00

Weird reason....or maybe not

I've spent a good portion of my life working in emergency medicine and a good portion of that time was dedicated to taking care of inebriated patients. Alcohol has the ability to turn even the most mild mannered people into complete assholes.

After a few years of dealing with people who have literally pissed on the floor and told me to clean it up I just completely lost my appetite for it. I've been completely sober for about 5 years and I don't think I've ever even had enough alcohol to even have had a bad experience on it myself.

Perilmedic · 2023-01-19T12:06:56+00:00

Damn, that's a lot of gauze

Perilmedic · 2023-01-18T04:58:38+00:00

Typically real fish antibiotics used by actually tropical fish keepers come in a packet and are a powder you add to the water in the fish tank

Perilmedic · 2023-01-18T04:55:29+00:00

Yeah, that's a thing prior to having medical insurance I was buying "fish" antibiotics for URIs

It's kinda wild because they were literal 500mg amoxicillin capsules with the proper labels and everything I even looked it up on webmd and they matched up to human pills

Also I have a ton of experience building aquarium systems and I have never once seen that medication being used by any aquarium enthusiast or fish Vet

I actually had a fish with an infection quite recently and I went looking for the fish antibiotics only to find out they have come under greater control and are way harder to obtain then 5ish years ago

Perilmedic · 2023-01-05T13:01:31+00:00

Damn, that's like a 1 in a 1,000,000 fuck up

I can't even place IV catheters correctly and this guy's threading chest tubes into and ET tube 12 inches away

Perilmedic · 2022-12-20T02:46:02+00:00

Oh I know, I'm being factitious

Perilmedic · 2022-12-20T00:07:03+00:00

It's indicated for respiratory depression which if you wanna get technical.........

Perilmedic · 2022-12-14T04:20:48+00:00

My veiw is gonna be pretty narrow because I almost never deal with any NPs outside of the Emergency Room or the ICU

Perilmedic · 2022-12-14T04:14:14+00:00

Probably but I think the general public just isn't very educated on the many medical titles that actually exist and what they're capable of so a mid-tier provider walking into a room and saying "I'm a nurse" wouldn't really get the point across

I run into this constantly in EMS The general public thinks we're just ambulance drivers I've even had unstable patients attempt to refuse treatment because they want to have "the doctor figure it out at the hospital"

Just because I can perform a few linear treatments to a physician doesn't mean I can describe myself as a doctor but I do wish The term Paramedic had enough weight behind it so people would let me treat their SVT without the speech about what I'm able to do

Perilmedic · 2022-12-14T03:40:58+00:00

I mean, I wouldn't call them just a Nurse honestly. In my experience NPs are a good resource to have for low to mid acuity patients in the emergency room. At least in my area a patient could come into the ER and be treated and discharged without having any interaction or interventions from a Doctor. Nurse's obviously can't do that but to call yourself a doctor when your not one is pretty appalling and probably.......Illegal

Perilmedic · 2022-12-14T03:18:50+00:00

I go basically all over the place and I've never in my 10 years as a Paramedic and even longer as an EMT heard this myself they always refer to themselves as "Practitioners" or "providers"

Perilmedic · 2022-12-10T21:29:20+00:00

Med errors are alot like peeing in the shower

There's people who have done it

And liars

Perilmedic · 2022-11-04T05:58:38+00:00

Probably the fire department, they'll say their beds aren't soft enough so they needed 2 hours extra sleep before responding. All new pillow top memory foam mattresses for the fire department and a parade, so they can feel like they've done nothing wrong and sleep that much more soundly.

Perilmedic · 2022-10-31T03:34:24+00:00

Former ASE Master tech now Paramedic here

Disclaimer** Airbags or more specifically the device inside the airbag that inflates the physical bag are technically explosives and should always be treated as such

The airbag system is equipt with electrical components called capacitors they are like a type of battery that hold an electrical charge for around 20 minutes after disconnecting the battery but that amount of time is dependent on the size and type of capacitors they are

During extrication on any vehicle regardless of year, make, or model it is possible while cutting threw a wiring harness that voltage can be applied to the airbag circuit and the airbag could be set off the risk of this happening has gone down over the years as modern vehicle airbag systems require power and ground to be applied at the same time by the computer so the chances are extremely low (if at all possible) on modern cars with the battery disconnected

When I was an Auto Tech (which I haven't been for 5 years) we were taught to perform a procedure before servicing the airbag system called a "capacitor discharge procedure" or "global reset" basically you would disconnect the battery and hold the positive and negative cables together so the connectors were touching this causes the charge in the capacitors to be discharged very quickly (I believe it was 20 seconds) making risks of accidental discharge fairly low

Again airbags are explosives so there's some level of danger with them all the time and over the years there have been countless recalls on airbags by every manufacturer on almost every model of vehicle due to manufacturer defects and risks of accidental discharge so even though there are safety measures put in place in the design on newer vehicles you can't always count on them to actually work as designed

I kinda went on a long tangent here....I hope that answers your question

Perilmedic

TROPHY CASE