I showed up for my first day of orientation for the “emergency response team” assignment. The person who was supposed to orient me was not scheduled to work that day so instead someone gave me a tour of the out patient center and showed me the boundaries for the code team, and then I just kind of sat around and observed the PACU.

From what I can gather, this job is looking a little nebulous. Apparently they just need someone to carry the code pager because the regular hospital patients have been using the outpatient MRI and CT scanner up until 8PM, and so someone must be available if one of these patients coded. I tried to find out who else would be answering these codes and I couldn’t get a straight answer. According to one of the nurses it would just be me. She said they wanted us to come in and do it for overtime but no one agreed because no one wanted to put their licenses on the line.

So what exactly am I getting myself into here? Tomorrow I meet with the CPR coordinator for the out patient center, so maybe I will have some more insight after that.

On another note, I learned where the boundaries are for where a code team can answer a code.

There’s also a subway stop underneath the hospital. If you get off the subway and have an MI, (that’s heart attack to any lay readers) 911 must be called. If you get off the subway, make it up the stairs to the hospital entrance and have an MI, then you get the hospital code team. I understand there are all sorts of logistics and liability issues here and the hospital has to draw the line somewhere but sheesh. Can you imagine having an MI and knowing that you are a flight of stairs away from trained professionals who could save your life but they won’t because you are right outside the boundary? How does 911 respond to emergencies in the subway system anyway?

Later on I told my husband about this and he asked, “Is there an escalator going from the subway to the hospital?”

“I think so.”

“If you can dump them on the escalator going up then I guess they can be saved.”

Men. Ever the problem solvers.