Chapter 29
“Code Blue Room 538. Code Blue Room 538. Code Blue Room 538.” The time was 6:15 p.m., nearing the end of the shift.
“I wonder who that is,” Tracy said. “I hope it’s not one of our patients we just transferred up to the stepdown unit.” As charge nurse, Tracy left the unit to respond to the Code Blue. SICU nurses always dreaded the announcement of a code from their sister unit for several reasons. One, they had to respond to the code, even though the code team from ER also responded; and two, if it was someone they had transferred up there, it meant the patient had deteriorated. The final reason was that now they had to scramble to create a bed, since the patient would, in all likelihood, be coming back to SICU as an emergency transfer. Patient assignments had to be switched qui
