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by Athenas83

I'm just curious as to what unit has the most code blues? I figure intensive care. I'm a student (start next week!) and have no clue what specialty I want to work in eventually. I definitely feed off adrenaline, but of course would not want to see my patients dying

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

I've worked oncology, and we had our share; our patients are probably the sickest outside of ICU.

[debthern]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

I would think the medsurg floors would only because in the units the patients are monitored more..

[linzz]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

I did clinical time on a medical floor and I would say there was at least one code per week. I am not sure if this is a lot as compared to specialty areas like ICU, emergency, oncology etc.

[Creamsoda]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

You would think ICU would have alot of codes, but thats not really true. Because we monitor them so close, we can stop a full blown code. Yes they can get really unstable fast, but we interven before they are totally dead. We can fix what the problem is right away wether it be lytes, or a dropping BP quite quickly.

[agent66]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

we have quite a few in cardiology/cardiac surg but most are witnessed and revived, often just an electrolyte imbalance or something manageable with easy interventions. Of course there are always our 90 year old pre pacers found on a round...

[loricatus]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

It gotta be the Emergency Room. In addition to those that crash in the ED, we get to continue the codes that started out in the field. One a day is expected.

[mamalle]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

in our hospital its usually the Tele floor with ICU being a close second due to being a trauma facility- of course a ER would have the most codes though if you figured it in..

[widi96]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

It's a toss up between ER and ICU at our hospital. Our oncology floor actually don't have a whole lot of codes, but I think it is how you divide it up. The oncology floor probably has more deaths, but the CA patients that are that sick that do not opt to be DNR are usually put in our ICU.

[RNsRWe]

Re: What unit has the most codes?

Alot of that will depend on whether your hospital has a Rapid Response team or not. Facilities using them have documented fewer full blown codes than those that don't. The idea is you call a Rapid Response for someone who looks like they're gonna tank, before they actually do....and you get a team of respiratory, cardio, ED doc, etc on the run. They have halted many a situation that, in my opinion, would have been Code Blue if they weren't there.

That said, I think our cardiac unit has the most actual Code Blues, by far. ICU would be second, even with the monitoring. Our surgical unit and respiratory unit utilize the RR Team enough that we very rarely have Codes called. My med-surg saw exactly one in the last year, but LOTS of RR calls. The ED has them pretty rarely, actually. Again, RR Team prevents many of them from going further.