Health Care Jeopardy game – What is Code Green?
You are playing a game of Health Care Jeopardy. The category is “codes”, and the stakes are high. Do you know the answer to this question: the name of the code used to describe an emergency evacuation situation is _____.
“The code for fire is red and the code for cardiac arrest is blue,” you think to yourself, “and the code for emergency evacuation is?” Give yourself big points if you knew the correct answer is Code Green, because anecdotally, we know that many health care staff are not very familiar with Code Green and what it entails. What it’s not: a health care recycling emergency. What it is: an important action required when many of our other codes are activated.
“We’ve experienced two responses to Code Green events fairly recently in Lower Mainland health facilities,” says Deirdre McLachlan, Director of Health Emergency Management. “The first involved a gas leak in Vancouver near Cambie and Broadway that required an evacuation of staff from several office buildings where teams from BC Cancer, LM IMITS and HSSBC were housed. Fortunately, staff and patients at nearby Vancouver General were not impacted.”
The second incident is still popular on You Tube – the flooding of the Emergency Department at Surrey Memorial (SMH). “Staff were commended for their quick thinking and team work in evacuating the large department, with both clinical and support staff working side by side to safeguard patients and the valuable equipment required to care for them,” Deirdre adds.
The Health Emergency Management (HEMBC) team across the lower mainland are hoping these incidents and others of note, such as this summer’s highly publicized flooding in Alberta, will peak people’s interest in learning more about Code Green. To that end, they have developed a new online course aimed at helping all staff who work in acute and residential care facilities to feel more prepared and confident should they ever be required to participate in an evacuation scenario. The training module takes about 20 minutes to complete. Here’s what you’ll learn about when you log on to the shared health authority Course Catalogue Registration System (CCRS) or the PHSA Learning Hub:
- Events that lead to evacuation
- Kinds of evacuation
- Types of evacuation
- Actions to take during an evacuation
- How to prioritize patients/residents for relocation
- Techniques for evacuating patients/residents.
Deirdre sums it up this way, “The training makes it easy to be green. Learning about Code Green is a simple step that helps save lives. Please set some time aside this summer to check it out.”