I work on a shoulder and elbow surgery floor and occasionally we get plastic surgery patients who are staying overnight come to our floor. (although i'm not sure why...) Well last night was one of those times. General surgery was covering so if we had any problems we were to call them. A resident that none of my co-workers had met before came up to the floor to see the patient and to write insulin orders for her. While he was in the nurses station a code blue was called on a different floor. We heard the announcement and just went along with our business. Then the resident turns to us and says, "What's a code blue?"
We all looked at each other thinking "he's joking right? he has to be joking."
Oh, he was serious. So we told him what it was. He mumbled something about how that's something he'll have to go over with his senior resident and that he just knows it as a 'code'. We all just looked at him like "you're nuts buddy" and he left the floor.
Now it IS general knowledge that a code blue is a medical emergency, correct? You don't need to have any medical background to know that, right? All you need is to watch one hour of a medical drama to know what it means.
HyperSaurus, RN, BSN
765 Posts
Our 'code blue' is called a 'code 5'. No idea why.