What is "the code" in this context? The article masterfully reveals details slowly over time, but I don't want to lean on my own understanding of what that means.
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/code-blue-code-black-wha...
Code blue is not literally used everywhere... many places in the US use a number these days like 99 for "Blue" and then other memorable two digit numbers for more specific, less emergent needs like respiratory support or rapid response. Same thing.
There is both the PA codes, ie anything from fire (unsurprisingly often code red), active shooter, to rapid response (person still has a pulse but ain’t feeling so hot)... to full on code blue.. but most places I work these are “quick” numbers like 66 or 88.
I don’t think freaking out bystanders is a consideration.. since the non medical codes are often posted prominently in conspicuous locations, and the medical ones.. I mean who cares. But in most hospitals if you look near a nurse station you’ll find them not hidden. But who gets freaked out by a trauma alert or a code blue at of all places a hospital? there’s no saving those types.
Having worked in a number of places it is more about expediency and scale. Code Blue was fine in the 1960s.. it was basically a tack on to other colors and it’s not too confusing. Now fast forward and there are different types of teams you want to call... respiratory, rapid response, ACLS, police, psych.. colors don’t scale well for this unless you want to go off of roygbiv.. and then you’ve lost.
Edit: there have been efforts to standardize. In the US sometimes you get consistency in a region.
I'm confused by this part. It almost implies that the code also involved intentionally not saving her
As an example, they intentionally didn't save her from the agony of receiving CPR.
The other thing is without an AED (a defibrillator) the success rate of CPR is quite low, one physician I know equated it to buying time for the brain, as he had never seen CPR alone bring someone back.
For the first few minutes after someone's heart stops beating, it probably hasn't actually stopped, it is just beating in a chaotic way that isn't actually moving any blood (this is known as "ventricular fibrillation, hence the "defibrillator"). The electrical discharge of the defibrillator is like someone standing up in a loud room and blowing an air horn. It shuts everyone up for a second, and hopefully the heart's normal "pacemaker" can take back over.
There are some medications that can be given to "strengthen" that pacemaker, and to make the rest of the heart a bit less "twitchy" (and therefore less likely to go back into a lethal arrhythmia).
There is a related arrhythmia known as ventricular tachycardia where the heart is beating too quickly to move any blood (and the beating is being triggered by random cells in the heart, not be the heart's intrinsic pacemaker).
If someone is unresponsive and doesn't appear to be breathing, high quality CPR and early defibrillation are what will help them. If you have an AED, put it on them and follow the prompts it gives. And AED will not do anything that would make the patient's condition worse (to hurt someone with a defibrillator, you need to be using a manually controlled one).
That's what I get for late night commenting...
What he means is that they did everything they could medically, at the cost of broken ribs and punctured lungs. But that it was probably not the right thing to do.