ETorres SPN

[ETorres]

Hello everybody,

This is my first time, doing anything like this, I'm kind of nervous. I'm in my first couple of months at nursing school and have a very difficult instructor. She has given us assingment to write an essay of the responsiblilities of an LPN in a code blue. Besides assessing the pateint and begining CPR I'm lost. I don't know exactly what to write about. I searched all my books and can't seem to find anything. If anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

[suebird3]

Welcome to allnurses.com! I moved your post to Student Discussions for better responses.

Hope this helps!

Suebird

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

hi, etorres!

i am going to list a couple of links for you to investigate at the end of my post. they are code blue procedures at various facilities around the country. read them. what you are going to find is that although some will catagorize and delegate specific jobs to certain persons, the actions that need to be taken are all pretty much the same. i have been to hundreds of code blues over my career. i would recommend that you start out by making a list of what goes on during a code blue. it is every hospital employee's responsibility to start cpr and call the code if they find the patient apneic and pulseless no matter who you are or what your job title is. and, of course, you continue doing cpr until you are relieved by someone or you are directed by the doctor in charge of the code blue team to stop. usually, a supervisor or nurse manager needs to be in attendance and if they haven't shown up, need to be hunted down immediately. the rn has very specific things that only he/she can do such as giving iv medications or taking orders from the patient's attending physician. at some point the patient's family has to be notified. there are some things that the lpn can assist the rn in doing without overstepping the boundaries of his/her license. some other things that need to be done during a code that you won't necessarily find in the pages of a procedure manual are things like making sure there is a clear pathway for the personnel that will be charging down the hall to the patient's room, getting the chart to the patient's room, moving the other patient in the room (if it is a semi-private room) to another room if possible or assuring him that everything is being done for his roommate, escorting family or visitors to another area away from the action, moving equipment and furniture that is not needed out of the way/out of the room to accomodate the code team and crash cart, get calls in to central supply for equipment that is needed that is not in the crash cart, noting the key times that things are being done if someone isn't already writing them down (i used to write times and blood pressures all over the palms of my hands and my arms with ink when i couldn't find paper), get rid of the looky-loos that want to see what is going on and later on clean up the mess that was left after the code was over. at any time you may have to substitute for a member of the code team that either didn't show up yet or maybe just isn't on the code blue team of the hospital where you will be working. but, always remember that you have to function within the legal boundaries of your license. as the rn i usually put my head together with the other people on the staff to correlate times and events that had occurred for the code blue report i had to make and all the charting i had to do after the code was over. i depended a great deal on the lvns who worked with us to keep the floor running while i was busy with the code team as patients were still ringing their call lights and needing things while the code was going on. those lvns just picked up the ball, took over the care of my patients, ran the unit and kept our regular routines going so our work didn't get behind. without their teamwork and assistance the patients would have had to wait for prn pain medication, routine medications would have gotten passed very late, iv's might have run dry, and patients would have been neglected. if you didn't do any of these things, if you only served to remind your nurses of the things that they might have forgotten to do during a code, then you've done well.

if there is one thing i learned it is to remain calm during a code. a code doesn't take a whole big gang of people either--only 3, maybe 4 people. when people are excited, that excitement gets infectious and its not a good thing to have everyone on the staff running around all jazzed up on adrenaline. people think better in an environment of calm and that is something else that you can do to influence the other staff. good luck with you paper.

http://www.virginia.edu/studenthealth/manual/codeblue.html

http://www.dent.ohio-state.edu/postdocgd/policies/03-21.pdf

http://student.lssu.edu/~jwojtkow/cs290/policies/iii-2.3.1.htm