Code Blue

I sometimes forget that I work in a hospital, surrounded by life and death.

It was a stressful day, complete with the usual barrage of meetings and exhausting arguments over, well, the big operational project. Some of the physicians are swinging from the chandeliers and it's not the easiest thing to control. They tend to play the "telephone game" and each time a doc tells the story, the words change just a little bit. I've received a huge PR lesson on how to manage unruly physicians!

I took a break by visiting the resident/intern lounge. We created a new lounge for them and since the residents' school year just started on July 1, they are NEWBIES. They make me look like the secure, together one! It's always nice to meet the new students; most of them will be floating around the hospital corridors for 4-5 years. Plus, it makes it far easier to recruit them if you already have known them for four years!

So after departing the lounge, I walked through the ER and found a patient looking lost. I helped her to her destination and continued on my way. Then a patient's family member came out of the cafeteria, carefully balancing a tray of food, looking confused about her whereabouts. She had the tray loaded up for she and her husband, who was up in CT Scan, receiving a test. I offered to walk with her and I started some light chit-chat with her while we waited for the elevator.

Just then, our hospital-wide PA system announced a "Code Blue in the CT Scan." She looked at me with huge, scared eyes and with a shaking voice said, "My husband's in the CT Scanner." Before the elevator doors closed after us, I saw a chaplain rushing down the hall (they respond to Codes, too). Grateful to see the chaplain, I pulled her into the elevator with us.

"Code Blue" means the patient's heart stopped while on the CT table.

Up in Radiology, I saw the other people who respond to Codes (ICU nurse, chief resident, attending physician, respiratory therapist) running through the corridor, pushing a crash cart. The patient's wife followed me and the chaplain down the hallway in a fast walk. None of us spoke. What was there to say? We have one CT Scanner at that campus and I had no consoling words to offer. She rounded her way into the CT Scan room and threw herself on her husband in a wailing angst that echoed through the tile hallways. Bewildered patients stepped out of the other radiology rooms and I tried to find someone to help me. The Code team, quickly unpacking their cart, needed to intubate the patient and do their best to resuscitate him. The wife continued wailing for her husband and grew agitated with our attempts to pull her away from the husband so they could administer shock. Once I saw the ER physician fire up the paddles, I knew we had to get the wife out of there.

At last, a member of the Security team came up and was able to open up an unused exam room for the patient's wife, the chaplain, and one of the nurses (who promised to duck in and out continually to keep the wife updated). I hung around for a short time to make sure Security and the chaplain had everything they needed. I was helpless and couldn't DO anything, but I have the means to quickly FIND someone who can. I soon departed Radiology, 20 minutes late for a meeting on financial productivity. Suddenly, financial productivity didn't seen quite so important.
It was awful, just awful. The wife, suspecting that everything was going to be fine with her husband, went down to the cafeteria to grab dinner so they could eat while they waited for his results. He coded and passed away while she was gone for 15 minutes.

It just goes to show that we never know the day or the hour.