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Code Chartreuse – “Too many codes”

by Anne McLaughlin on August 9, 2010 · 5 comments

in alarms, cognition/memory, health/healthcare, signs

Enjoy memorizing this hospital sign!

How about just announcing the issue rather than matching it first with a color? For example: “Attention, tornado!” seems like it would be effective.

Elopement, by the way, means a patient with Alzheimer’s needs to be located. That makes “purple” a code within a code (and makes me want to watch Inception again). This is also one of the few I could understand wanting to disguise with a color.

“Shooter” is another candidate for obfuscation, although I imagine the shooter would quickly figure out that any announcements were about them, while hospital denizens look around and say “Huh, we’ve never heard code silver before. Sounds like something to do with Alzheimer’s.”

Photo credit Jason Boyles.

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{ 4 comments }

Stacy D Williams August 10, 2010 at 11:10 am

Human Factors Blog: Code Chartreuse – “Too many codes” http://bit.ly/ddZphr

Peg Tyler August 10, 2010 at 8:39 pm

In my nurse friend Julie’s hospital a “Code Brown” is something else entirely and usually calls for a sponge bath and a new set of sheets . . .

Ship August 17, 2010 at 4:30 pm

You tackled one of my questions right away (i.e., what the hell is elopement? Staff running off to get married?). My second question is this: What is “code dry”? It sounds like a deodorant, but it appears to be a color somewhere between aqua and Williamsburg blue. Once you’ve exhausted the primary and secondary colors (with their easily identifiable names), you know you’ve gone too far.

John McSorley September 15, 2010 at 7:27 pm

Have you checked this is not a joke?

Code brown to evacuate a building?
Code dry for a water failure?

And i thought code blue was reserved for crash trollies and emergency resusicitation anyway.

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