CODE BLUE – Being a Nurse, You Need to Know It

As Wikipedia says - "Code Blue is generally used to indicate
a patient requiring resuscitation or in need of immediate
medical attention, most often as the result of
a respiratory arrest or cardiac arrest"

No matter, if you are an experienced nursing professional or a newbie, these two words are feared by both and if it is your first time, definitely it will be an experience of ultimate panicking. Surprisingly, it will make you feel as if you are unable to recall everything you have ever learned in your nursing education. Well, that’s Normal!

Sometimes, you may think that you are a terrible nurse when such things happen, don’t worry, it has been experienced by every nurse at some point in their nursing career and if anyone says it never happened, believe us – it’s a lie.

Here’s a story of a RN Daphne Neuhaus in her own words as published in the blog of NCLEXmastery.com - 

"I will never forget my first code blue.

I went back to check on my patient when I heard her continuous pulse ox start beeping like crazy. It said 60% and she had become unresponsive. A Code Blue was called, but before the code team arrived, we needed to put a board under the patient, remove the head of the bed and immediately start compressions and start bagging her.

I was white as a sheet and thankfully had another nurse on with me that kept things calm. I remember the first set of compressions I did and felt the patient’s ribs crack. The team arrived, which is about 10 people.I alternated with a male nursing assistant doing chest compressions…it is like an insane workout. I have watched multiple nurses have to straddle the patient literally to get enough force. We intubated the patient, but we never could get a heart rhythm or get her oxygen levels to come up.About this time, we reached her family and they said to make her a DNR. She unfortunately had thrown a massive pulmonary embolism and she died.

Each time got a bit easier and eventually I became the "calmer" of the other newer nurses, but I was still as terrified as anyone was. You, as well, will become that person as your career progresses."

To help first timers cope up with Code Blue situation, here is some advice from Daphne Neuhaus –

• Give about 10 seconds to prepare yourself. If you panic, you are of no help. Call a Code Blue as per the protocol set by your healthcare facility and if family members are close, ask them to leave the room.
• Put the patient on a flat position and if there is no pulse, start compressions and put on the ambu bag to start breaths with the help of a nursing assistant or a fellow nurse. Check the rhythm of the heart and access to IV. With a bit of luck, the Code Team would arrive by this time and will take over; however, you still need to be in the middle of it.
• More the number of times you face such situations, it will get easier for you to handle the primary stage. No matter how many times you did it, you will always feel terrified in first few moments. 

Code Blue is a situation where your skills and practical experience helps to save a life. To get hands-on experience of such situations, INSCOL provides simulation-based training workshops for nurses in Airway Management, ECG, Cardiovascular Assessment and more. To know more about the workshops, visit http://www.inscol.com/india/cce.