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INTRODUCTION
Hospital emergency codes are used worldwide to alert staff for various emergency situations in hospitals. The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly with a minimum of misunderstanding to the hospital staff, while preventing stress or panic among visitors of the hospital.
"Blue code" is generally used to indicate a patient requiring resuscitation or otherwise in need of immediate medical attention, most often as the result of a respiratory or cardiac arrest. Each hospital, as a part of a disaster plan, sets a policy to determine which units provide personnel for code coverage. In theory, any medical professional may respond to a code, but in practice the team makeup is limited to those who had advanced cardiac life support or other equivalent resuscitation training. Frequently, physicians from anesthesia, emergency medicine and internal medicine are charged in the team. A rapid response team leader or a physician is responsible for directing the resuscitation effort and is said to "run the code".[1]
Cardiac arrest in hospital areas is common, and delayed treatment is associated with a lower survival rate.[2] In Turkey, hospitals have rapid response teams or "blue code teams" to reduce preventable in-hospital deaths. Although education about the blue code team program has been provided in all hospitals, true "blue code" activations are rare. Due to the lack of medical emergency teams (METs) in this country, it is thought that wrong blue code activations are given by medical personnel in practice. This study aimed to explore the reasons of wrong blue code activations and also to ask if there is a need of another team as a MET to reduce blue code team efforts in hospitals.
METHODS
Study design and "blue code"
This study analyzed the "blue code" forms used between January 1 and June 1, 2012 in our hospital. The hospital moved to a new localization at the beginning of 2011 and currently it deals with approximately 72 000 patients per month. The hospital has a rapid response team composed of 2 experienced nurses and an emergency physician or an intensive care unit doctor to respond to all calls in all hospital areas except intensive care units and the emergency room. A "blue code" is defined as any patient...