Code Blue

I went over to "The Dark Side" this past weekend; that's what they call working the night shift. I worked in the Cardiovascular Recovery Unit (for my Preceptorship nursing class) Friday, from 11pm-7am, and Saturday and Sunday, 7pm-7am. That's why I'm up right now! At 11:46 pm! I'm not sleepy!

Friday and Saturday were pretty slow. I was caring for a patient who was doing great and sleeping through the night. The only thing that I really needed to do was assess every 4 hours and check up on/get urine output every hour. But... in the middle of the night on Saturday going into Sunday morning, I heard over the hospital-wide intercom "Code Blue, (#) floor, (unit name)" My preceptor looked at me and said, "Wanna go? Look for the room with all the people in it." Off I went, just down the hall from where I was. Turned out that the patient had more of an episode of distress rather than an actual code (which is when the heart/lungs stop working). I hung around for a few minutes then went back to my unit. Not 30 minutes later, I hear the Code Blue call again, and I go running. I exit my unit's doors and see 3 other nurses running down the hall; with a Code, nurses from many floors respond, as well as respiratory therapists and a few doctors. This time, the patient was coding. When I entered the room there were 3 other LU nursing students there as well; one of them being my good friend Kelsie, who responded with her nurse from another unit. The respiratory therapists were bagging the patient at the head of the bed (giving him air through a face mask), the nurses were getting drugs from the Crash Cart and pushing meds to try to get the patient's heart functioning while one nurse was doing chest compressions. Then, the nurse doing compressions called one of the LU nursing students to switch out with her, then Kelsie switched out with that student to do chest compressions as well! It was such an adrenaline rush. The doctors had to shock the patient because the patient went into Ventricular Tachycardia, a fatal arrhythmia. I was hoping to be next in line to do chest compressions if anything else happened, but the patient needed some tests done to determine what the extent of the underlying problem was, so I had to head out of the room and get back to my unit. But boy, it was so interesting to be "part" of the code. It made me want really want to be an ICU nurse! NICU, PICU.... we'll see!