Monday, June 16, 2008

Code what????

I was perusing some other nursing blogs late last night as I couldn't sleep (ahh the joys of working nights and trying to have a normal family life on your nights off) and ran into this post by Braden over at 20 out of 10 regarding all the types of code calls they have there.  Laughing hysterically I thought to myself "hey, self, we have the same thing!!"  Though my hospital has gotten away from calling them all code this and code that.  We now just have initials called overhead too.

Here are a sampling of the ones we have:

Code 8 (the regular code blue in most places but like Braden said named after a number so as not to scare the patients)

Code Mr. Green (severely agitated patient or visitor)

Code PCI (primary angioplasty)

Code Adam (lost or kidnapped pedi patient)

Code Orange (I think this is a bomb threat)

Code 123 Red (fire)

I think that's it for the actual "codes".  Now to move on to the initials:

MET called overheard along with the floor and room # means medical emergency team or rapid response team in some places

BAT called again along with the floor means the acute stroke team

Ok I think that's it on the alpha-numeric soup!!

Updated:
I checked the back of my badge after I got to work and not surprisingly I got a few of these wrong!!  The bomb threat is actually a Code Grey.  And I skipped one:  Code 911 (nope not the one where a patient is actually coding!!) which is an external disaster during which the phone tree should be activated to get as much staff as possible in the building.  This would be something like a major accident or chemical spill involving mass casualties etc.


2 comments:

Braden said...

Hey thanks for linking over to my blog. Sounds like your place might even be crazier than where I work. I didn't think that possible.

It is the poison of political correctness - you can't offend anybody, even if it is at the expense of safety and good patient care.

By the way... why do they feel the need to call code for an angioplasty? Don't they have pagers for that? Considering that the angioplasty team consists of a doctor and 2 nurses and 2 techs (usually) do they really need to call this one overhead?

Tracey said...

I think the answer as to why they need to call a code for an angioplasty is that we are a community hospital that only does primary angioplasty so it's a BIG thing at our hospital to be doing it. Once you hear it over head then everyone knows what their roles should be (insert eyeroll icon here). The important ones (ie doc, 2 techs, 2 nurses) are on a beeper and at home where they don't even hear the overhead call (unless it's during the day of course!!)

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