First Code

tachybradyRN · Oct 18, 2011

i was lucky enough never to see a code in nursing school, nor on the medical floor i worked on for 18 months after graduating (only rapid responses.) my first code came with my transfer to telemetry. we see them more often here than on the medical floors; i think this is just the nature of the patient population, as we get a lot of cardiac patients here. anyway this was a patient who had been having short runs of v-tach for days that ended up in full scale pulseless v-tach. i remember feeling so detached from my body, like i was watching over the situation from the ceiling, all while trading off with one of the other interns doing compressions. he lived, he went to ICU, he was okay. but ohgod how scary.

recovering nurse · Oct 18, 2011

Sounds like the one I described. he also kept mouthing "help" until he went unresponsive.

Yep, I will never forget the look on his face! Trying to say "help" while blood pouring from his mouth and nose. I have never had another bloody one like that but I have had some doozies working in a Surgical ICU,

That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Oct 18, 2011

i was lucky enough never to see a code in nursing school, nor on the medical floor i worked on for 18 months after graduating (only rapid responses.)

I was involved in a 3 hour code my first day of orientation. Started in MRI, went into the hall way, into the ER, to ICU and continued there for awhile. Talk about an interesting way to start a job. While it was not my first, it was the first as an RN.

turnforthenurse, MSN, NP · Oct 27, 2011

Had my first one as an RN very recently. My own patient, too. The patient did not go into cardiopulmonary arrest, but we still called a code because the patient's O2 sats were declining fast - 70's, then 60's on a non-rebreather. We had to do an RSI.