Plain Language Emergency Alerts

Emergency alert codes (eg, “Code Blue,” “Code Red”) are widely used in hospitals worldwide to quickly and efficiently direct staff to critical situations without alarming patients and visitors. However, the lack of emergency alert standardization across the health care sector has resulted in a remarkably wide range of code words being used to designate a relatively small number of critical situations, even among hospitals in the same area. For example, in Pennsylvania health care facilities between 2004 and 2013, there were 80 different emergency codes designating 37 different functional categories, creating 154 combinations of terminology and intended meaning.
Source: Journal of Emergency Nursing: JEN - Category: Nursing Authors: Tags: ENA Position Statement Source Type: research