Sorry, I completely misunderstood what they said. My mental picture was the equipment being _in_ the room attached to the patient (and safe to be so), but the person being stuck outside unable to easily intervene. My experience with MRIs is always being alone in a room which backed that up.

I'm not even thinking of this incident. My base query is why MRI patients seem to always be alone in the room. Ignore all the anaesthetics too; I've seen them refuse to let a nervous patients family member stand in the room during the scan even though it could completely calm the patient... that's what seems odd to me. This is based on UK hospital experiences; I'm not sure if it's universal.

The incident in question is sad and seems avoidable, but I hadn't even got that far yet; I got stuck on the top(ish) comment of "(Once the patient was anesthetized and the heavy door to the MRI machine room was closed and locked,) - I could only monitor my unconscious patient through a darkened heavy glass window". My thinking went "surely being in the room would be better" -> "they never seem to let anyone in the room" -> "why not?" - and then I confused you and we ended up here :)