Hey guys, I'm Siobhan
A second year medical resident
Today we are going through a very requested video
And that's emergency codes in the hospital
You guys have heard them overhead, you have been apart of them in some
of my other videos
*Over intercom* Code blue level 1.
Code yellow is being called so that's for a missing person
And the question is what do they all mean and what are they all for?
So let me know in the comments below if you've ever heard
an emergency code like that overhead
Or if it means something slightly different
in the hospital you work at
Across the world, people use these emergency
codes in the hospital
I live in Canada and I'm in the province
of Ontario and across Ontario we have actually standardized
the majority of emergency codes. There may be some
little extra ones that are site specific but for the most part
no matter where you work , you'll know what it means
Okay so let's dive right in
Code orange is an external disaster
So something outside of the hospital is happened
and we expect a whole bunch of patients
to be coming to the hospital. Basically like Grey's Anatomy when
they have all those catastrophes, like a ferry sinking
or a train accident, things like that but instead of going
out into the field, we're getting prepared for the patients to come
And that actually happened last year so here's.. here's
a clip from last year that I never ended up showing you guys
Hey guys, it's Sunday night. It's about 7 o'clock.. umm
I just got an email saying that there's a code orange
in this case.. um.. there's a fire at one of the
nursing homes so
they're asking for all of us to come in
at short notice. Just to come in right now tonight
because we have a whole bunch of patients who are going to be showing up at the hospital
so I'm just getting my stuff ready to
head in and um I just really really hope
that
um.. there aren't too many people who've been injured
Honestly, I was so impressed with everyone at the hospital
there were probably about 30 residents
who came within less than an hour to the hospital
to be able to admit 100 patients
100 patients all at once coming is huge amount of work
so administrators, nurses, doctors everyone pulled together
to find a place to be able to care for and treat these patients
So code black, this is a
suspicious object or it's an actual bomb threat
so really scary .. um..
obviously we don't hear this often, I've never heard, I hope to never hear it ever
but because we're not going to be as familiar
there's actually a protocol that's kept at the nursing desk
so that we can open it up if there is a code black ever
anyway I can never imagine that, it's terrifying
Code blue, now this is a medical
emergency. This is where I jump to action
It's when a patients heart has stopped, so cardiac arrest
or when they've stopped breathing, respiratory arrest
Or it can actually be when people are worried that's about to happen
Or a patients gotten really sick really quickly
and you want more help in the hospital, you call a code blue
So when I'm in the hospital working away, seeing patients
and I hear an announcement and they start saying code
you can just feel everyone kinda pauses for
a second and is waiting and if they say blue
all of a sudden, you snap into action
and this is a real team activity
and a lot of people showing up to these, you've got a respiratory
therapists, anesthesia, nursing, residents, medical students
they all flood in to a room to help
As the senior medical resident so me
I'm the team leader so I stand at the foot of the bed
and you're organizing what everyone's doing
and you're the one giving orders and giving
medications and telling people to do CPR and intubate
and all that. You are the captain of the team
So it's a.. it's a very high stakes time
we're trying to bring someone back to life often.. um
So if you want me to go in depth and really tell you all about
what a code blue is like and what we're doing just
let me know in the comments below, give this video a thumbs up
so that will be the sign to me that you guys want me to make that video
Code silver, another scary code
this means there's an active shooter or someone with a gun or
expect a gun. so again never heard this, never
want to, very scary stuff
Code omega, so okay
not a color and it's not actually code
in all hospitals
but I've been apart of a number of them and
it's basically to let people know that there is so much
blood loss from a person that it's life threatening
and it's a way to get the blood bank, the staff
everyone working together, having good communication
to get a bunch of blood products to that person to try
to save their life. The first time I ever
was part of a code omega was in medical school
And I was on my emerg rotation, down in
the emerg and a young guy had been
in a motorcycle accident and he broke his pelvis
and if you break your pelvis
you can just bleed into your back
it's called the retroperitoneal space, it's this area
in the back that can hold liters and liters of fluid
and what ended up happening is he was bleeding so much
that we pumped 30 units in blood products
into this patient to try to
stabilize him enough to get him to the operating room
and that did happen
it was incredible to see
and the way you get so much blood product in at once
is using something called a level one transfuser
so you pop different bags of blood products
in and they kinda squeeze them down so that
the blood product will get in really quickly and in
a fast transfusion into the person
Code brown.. um.. this is actually a
hazardious spill in the hospital
okay a code brown, if you look this up on urban dictionary
or just like talk about it with people, it would mean
something very different.. um.. so i don't know
it's kinda a funny code or the name of the code is kinda funny, maybe I'm immature
Code red, so this is
fire
um.. unless you actually are in the area
so usually they announce where the code red is located
so unless you're in that area you just close the doors and windows
and you wait for further instruction, so you're not
actually evacuating until you hear
code green and now
I think green for go, so that's when you're actually going to leave
the hospital, you're evactuating at this point
code aqua is a flood
I have heard that one, I don't know where that was or what was going on
but then the code was called off and it didn't really affect my day
so I don't have a story there
Code yellow, so this is a missing person
or missing patient really.. um.. and
this happened to me when I was on call and vloging with you guys and it ended up
triggering a whole bunch of comments and questions
about whether a patient decide to leave the hospital
this would automatically trigger a code yellow so
to answer that
it's not about a patient leaving so much
it's about whether the patient is competent, so can
the person make the decision for themselves, can they
say the pros and the cons and understand the risks
involved with leaving the hospital when their still sick
so if you can tell me very reasonably these are the reasons
I'm going and I don't care if something bad happens to me
well, I can't stop you, you're competent
So at that point, it would be leaving AMA
So against medical advice
and that happens
but just imagine, imagine someone had meningitis
they've got an infection in their brain, they don't know where they are, they're confused
if they left, maybe they run into traffic and get hit by a car
we have to protect these patients who aren't
able to make decisions for themselves because they're too sick
or they are not able to think clearly
for one reason or another and that's when we call a code yellow
because they're not competent, we have to get people to look
for them and for their own safety and if we can't find them
in the hospital we get police involved to actually bring them back
to the hospital, so it's a really big ordeal
Code white, this is a violent person
that could be a patient, that could be a family member
but if people are feeling unsafe in the hospital because of someone's
actions and it's usually in the emergency department
in the psychiatry wing
but it can really happen anywhere and in fact,
this has happened to me a couple of times where I was
physically intimidated or people where yelling at me.. um
and I really felt unsafe, you feel nervous and
we have to be treating everybody, you have
to treat every patient and sometimes
violent is actually a symptom of their disease
or.. um.. their illness, mental or
physical and so you have to treat everyone but
you also have a right to
feel safe in your work place.. um..
all it takes is a code white, security guards come
they look big and burly in their uniforms and
they stand there and sometimes that can show
strength in numbers is enough to calm someone down.. um..
it also gives you backup so that you feel safe
because you should never be harmed at work
So those are the main codes
Thanks so much for watching and if you want to know
really in detail what goes on in a code blue
let me know in the comments below, if you're interested I'll make that video
So if you want to see me vloging in the hospital with a code blue
check this one out and if you want to see
a code yellow, check this one out
Otherwise, I'll be back in the hospital vloging again next week
So don't forget to subscribe if you don't want to miss any of those
I'll chat with you guys next week so bye for now