Code blues are fairly commonplace events on acute care medicine floors. In my two months of wards at Harborview, I've managed to take part in a small handful of emergency responses where patients' hearts stop beating and lungs stop breathing. As an intern, the best job I can hope for is to pump on the chest, check the femoral pulse, or lend my watch to the nurse who is recording details of the scene. Glamorous? No. Intense? You bet.
The last code I attended taught me two very important lessons:
(1) Take the elevator. Although sprinting multiple floors is an excellent way to exercise, it does not bode well for the patient if the doctor herself codes on floor 7.5 en route to said code on floor 9. Burning calves and lungs are painful, and moreover, panting ferociously at the bedside does not portend a great deal of confidence. It's simply obvious the doctor needs to exercise a bit more frequently than the codes she attends.
(2) Remove the stethoscope. Pumping on the chest at a rate of 100 per minute (to the tune of "Staying Alive") at a depth of 1.5 inches for two-minute compression cycles is hard work. Believe me. And having the stethoscope drum you in the face every time you pump the chest deducts major style points. At this particular code, one of my favorite nurses stepped up next to me and quickly removed both my stethoscope AND name tag ... saving me from embarrassment and quite a few bruises!
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