Code Blue Systems

[WillowNMe]

I am interested in hearing what other hospitals use to communicate Code Blues. I did a search on AllNurses and found older conversations about overhead pages --- and those were from 2001!

Currently, my hospital uses a pager system with an overhead page, "Code Blue Floor#". I am trying to find a couple of different systems to introduce to my managers that are quicker and more accurate.

[FloatRN19]

In room button that automatically goes overhead and pages. Also the call light tree on the rook lights up in a rainbow and two screens at both ends of the unit have the room number pop up just so people coming on the unit in a rush can check that screen and know where to go. Also the screen number will pop up before you hear the overhead if the monitor station is calling the code.

who knows how feasible it would be, but smart watches/wristbands that light up blue with the room number on the face might help cut back on the situations where your hands are too busy to check a pager.

[AnnieOaklyRN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

My hospital uses over head page as well as beeper/vocera text messages. I am on the IV team so we get sent a page as well as a vocera text message whenever there is a code or stat call.

There are code buttons in some rooms, but you are still expected to call the operator as well.

Stat calls are only paged/texted out, there is no over head page.

Annie

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

We had different levels of emergencies when I worked in the hospital. Every room had an emergency light, that sounded an alarm and brought all available nurses and MDs on the floor to the room. This was mostly for seizures when I worked in the hospital and, by and large, we could manage them without calling a true code. If a patient stopped breathing or had some kind of cardiac arrest (knock on wood, the only patients who ever cardiac arrested on my floor were end of life/DNRs), a code blue was called and this brought everyone and their mother to the floor. This was called overhead with the operator announcing the floor and room number. We also had the option to call an ICU STAT, which was essentially a rapid response. That was just by page to the ICU team who were on pager that day. There were 1 or 2 times that we tried that and before they responded, the situation progressed to a code blue situation.

[K+MgSO4, BSN]

Our hospital doesn't do overhead pages. We press the emergency bell to alert ward staff, someone calls the emergency line and this sends pages to the MET call team (in ICU), the duty nurse managers, PCAs and resident doctors. It works well, usually the residents are there in 2-3 mins and the MET call team in about 3-5 mins.

We have discussed going silent ie no overhead pages as we averagw 40 MET 3 code blue a week and about 50 grey (unarmed threat, security response) a week. However until the black holes in the paging system can be fixed (at no cost LOL ) (public health system in Oz) we will continue to voice page.

[flipflopsNsweetTea]

This is a major issue for me in my hospital. The code button in the pt room is actually a cord in the patient bathroom with a button that says "pull for help." Can you guess how many pts have pulled the code cord for toilet paper? Pulling the cord sets off an alarm throughout the whole unit and everyone's handheld phones ring and everyone comes running, dragging the code cart and all (but never any TP). Once we determine that, in fact, a nurse pulled the cord and it's actually a code situation, someone calls a special code # and the operator announces the code and location over the over head. The code team is also paged at that time.