How often do you have codes on your unit?

Nurses General Nursing

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Studying my ACLS and I'm just kind of mildly curious, folks. How often do you have codes, and what unit do you work on?

I'll go first: about every six months, ortho-med/surg. We do call rapid responses about every two weeks.

SionainnRN

914 Posts

Specializes in Emergency Room, Trauma ICU.

I'm in the er so daily.

Specializes in Endoscopy, OR, ICU, HIV, Bariatrics.

I'm in the ICU and new. I was at first a bit creeped out but there are always more than 2 RNs next to you, two doctors and other bystanders. At my 300-bed hospital, we usually have 3 or so MI codes a week. This does not include strokes or rapid response. Hope this helps!

Specializes in Emergency.

We use acls every day. Quite a few of our patients arrive in what I guess would be rapid response condition on the floor. We usually fix them before they crash. Sometimes their determination to die overcomes our ability to save them. And we very rarely call a code blue in the ER. Usually it's "i need help in here NOW!"

Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.
We use acls every day. Quite a few of our patients arrive in what I guess would be rapid response condition on the floor. We usually fix them before they crash. Sometimes their determination to die overcomes our ability to save them. And we very rarely call a code blue in the ER. Usually it's "i need help in here NOW!"

Nothing gets peoples attention more than "I need some nurses in here now?!!!!"

Specializes in Hospice.

rapid responses 1 -4 times a month (but we have pts that could have had a RR called we just deal with directly with the dr, for instance i had a non-responsive pt with o2 stat of 60 percent at bedside report..... i got a rebreather and an order for narcan............RR would have been fine but because the dr answered right away when i called .....not necessary) , full on codes are usually fairly rare because we catch them before it gets to that point and they either get stabilized or code in the unit ( I work in a tele/surgical unit)

brownbook

3,413 Posts

Old job, acute care hospital in a smaller community, various units I floated to.....maybe (the memory fades) a few (very few) a month, not counting the ER, which wasn't that busy but would add a few more to that number.

Moved to out patient surgery within the same hospital in 2000 and have been in out patient surgery since then. Have not been in one code since then.

Aurora77

861 Posts

Specializes in Med Surg.

I work med-surg ortho as well. We rarely have codes on our floor, maybe once or twice a year. In fact, I've been there a year and a half and just experienced my first last month. I was grateful for my ACLS training then! We have rapid responses about once a month. I work nights with a fantastic crew so we're usually quick to notice changes with out getting to a RR or code situation. The code I just experienced was completely out of the blue, however.

Specializes in ED.

ER...pretty much daily.

blackvans1234

375 Posts

Ive worked in the CCU one time (floated) and had a code blue one time.

Hows that for frequency!?

Somedays its none, somedays it's a few per shift in the ICU. The ICU is part of the hospital's code team so sometimes there are no code rapid responses or code blues in the hospital and other shifts there are 7-10 per shift.

Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.

I work adult medicine.

One night we had three. All on the same patient...he coded twice more in the unit before family was contacted and care was withdrawn. But that really doesn't count as three since it was the same patient. :)

One week we had three different patients code. Other than that, no more than once per month, I would say.

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