Code team

[Johnwhite13]

Are there any government regulations on how many people must be in a code team? I currently work in a critical access hospital ER. There are only 4 staff members (1 NP, 1 RN, 1 LVN, and 1 CNA). Lab and rad tech are on call and do not stay in house. This staff is responsible for the ER and Medsurg. Our new CEO is now wanting to put the CNA on call as well. We do not feel that this is safe to cut our already minimal staff. I'm wondering if anybody can find information on patient outcomes involving code teams that we can present as argument against cutting staff.

thank you for your help.

[JKL33]

It seems it would be an uphill battle to prove you need a CNA when you don't need lab or rad in-house! Wow. What kind of ED patient numbers do you have? And how many admitted patients...or...how often is there an admitted patient?

Who can afford to hold all of these on-call positions??

[brownbook]

I'm a little confused. I assume this is a very small hospital with such low staffing and the rad and lab tech not even being in house but on call????

By code team do you mean if a patient in the hospital needs BLS/ACLS and a code blue is called?

Or are you referring to on call staff for when an ambulance calls that they're bringing in a critical patient "code three, lights and sirens" so the code team can be called in?

[CraigB-RN, MSN, RN]

Out of curiosity how many beds does your CAH have? They can range from 14-25.

No there are no regulations on code team specific. In most Critical Access Hospitals the "code team" consist of the on duty staff, the on call provider and the oncall lab and -ray person. In some places they are so small that the lab and x-ray maybe the same person. Most places require at least two people in the building at the same time. The only mandated requirement is one RN.

[Johnwhite13]

We have a 3 bed ER And Med-Surg is set up for 7 inpatients. Thank you for your response, it is very helpful.