SAN DIEGO, CA – According to hospital administrators, Code Blue carts are now being outfitted to meet a new and growing medical emergency. Effective Jan. 1, 2015, Drawer 2 in all Code Blue carts at Sunshine Community Hospital will contain freshly-made turkey sandwiches and mini ginger ales.
“Medical emergencies have really changed over the past 20 years,” said hospital administrator Jeremy Brighton. “Today’s real and more frequent emergencies in the ED and on the floors deal with irate hungry patients. We like to call it a Code Hangry around here. If a patient is hungry or thirsty, they might fill out a negative patient satisfaction survey. That, my friends, would be worse than an actual death.”
Drawer 1 will still contain normal ACLS drugs such as epinephrine, vasopressin, and amiodarone. Instead of overrated airway equipment, Drawer 2 will now contain mini ginger ale cans and at least 4 freshly-made sandwiches. Two of the sandwiches need to be turkey sandwiches to be used as a first-round agent. After the first round of hunger resuscitation has been performed, ham and roast beef sandwiches can be used as alternative treatment modalities.
Sandwiches are required to have stickers placed on Saran wrap with the date and time. According to the Joint Commission, writing the date and time with a Sharpie directly on the Saran wrap will be forbidden as it must be written on a white label. Sandwiches will expire 24 hours after preparation, and will need to be replaced in the code cart. The sandwiches will be wrapped in such a way that nurses will be able to open and unwrap the sandwich in less than 3 seconds in order to administer them quickly to patients.
Ginger ale must be in mini-sized cans in order for the drawer to close, and must be delivered via a 5 mm 12-inch straw with a flexible end within seconds of administering a sandwich.
“We are excited about bringing these new life saving adjuncts to our medical teams,” stated Brighton. “Next on our list is to mandate turkey sandwich making classes for our nurses and medical assistants, to ensure continued high quality medical care. We don’t want to suspend licenses like we did last year to a nurse for making an incorrect and sub-par sandwich. ”
