In wake of tragedy, California adopts universal hospital emergency codes

Nov 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Carey Adams

One year ago, three employees at West Anaheim Medical Center were shot to death by a gunman. Authorities believe the gunman was targeting a nurse, who he blamed for his mother's death early that morning at the hospital from heart failure.

In his rage, the gunman killed a certified nursing assistant, a pharmacist, and the director of maintenance of the medical center.

The deaths of the three workers shocked the medical establishment in California. Questions arose regarding the ease with which the gunman walked into the hospital's second floor with two .38-caliber snub-nosed revolvers and about 50 additional rounds of ammunition. He killed the nursing assistant at the nurses' reporting room. Questions also emerged about how the gunman was able to advance to a stairwell and a hospital lobby of the medical center after the first distress call was signaled. He killed the pharmacist near the stairwell and the maintenance director in the lobby.

A year after the tragedy, the Healthcare Association of Southern California has adopted its first standardized hospital emergency codes. Several California hospitals have already begun implementing the 11 universal codes dealing with situations from medical emergencies to bomb threats.

The healthcare association has created a publication Healthcare Facility Emergency Codes: A Guide for Standardization. The new publication is aimed at assisting a medical facility's staff to respond in a uniform way to situations that may occur in and around the hospital.

The 11 codes are:

- Code Red: Fire

- Code Blue: Medical emergency - adult

- Code White: Medical emergency - pediatric

- Code Pink: Infant abduction

- Code Purple: Child abduction

- Code Yellow: Bomb threat

- Code Gray: Combative person

- Code Silver: Person with a weapon and/or hostage situation

- Code Orange: Hazardous material spill/release

- Code Triage Internal: An internal disaster

- Code Triage External: An external disaster.

The uniformed codes were developed based on the response of 289 hospitals to a survey sent by the healthcare association's committee. The responses revealed that only two of the codes - Code Red and Code Blue - had uniformity among nearly all of the hospitals.

Other instances revealed several different codes, including 48 varied codes for infant abduction and 62 varied codes for a combative person.

New codes will allow hospital employees who leave one hospital for another to react without having to relearn a code. For example, when staff is concerned about their own safety and the safety of others due to abusive or combative behavior, they will initiate a Code Gray.

Under the responsibilities of a Code Gray, a staff member witnessing verbal abuse should:

- Assist in attempts to verbally de-escalate the assailant;

- Call in a second person to take over;

- Add distance/barriers between victim and assailant.

If a staff member witnesses physical abuse, the proper responses under Code Gray are:

- Protecting self and others by assisting victim to stop/deflect blows by assailant;

- Creating a diversion by putting distance/barrier between victim and assailant;

- Getting medical assistance if needed.

For more information on the 81-page guidebook, contact Aviva Truesdell at (213) 538-0710.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

This month in Access Control

• Targeting The Customer
• Electronic Pedigrees
• One Hero Among Many
• Who? What? When? Where? Why?
• More from September's issue