Integrated collaborations among diverse providers within the intensive care unit can mitigate the challenges and experiences of health disparities among patients, their families and the provider teams that support them under medical duress. A code blue, the hospital emergency code that indicates a medical emergency, can be a profoundly stressful and traumatizing experience for a patient’s family or loved ones. These stressful and anxious experiences can be amplified if they arise from any number of social determinants of health. This case study characterizes an integrated, interprofessional response to a code blue at a safety-net hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). This case includes a complex constellation of challenges that include suspected criminality, the witnessing of violence by children, linguistic and cultural differences and multi-institutional responses to address the context of multi-systems failure of a patient and a responsive medical team attending to the patient’s medical needs. The integrated role of the hospital chaplain at the ICU is highlighted as an important mediator, facilitator, spiritual care provider and bridge between formal institutional responses (i.e. medical care provision, government intervention, law enforcement) and the complex dynamics of family, friends and social networks of patients, as well as within the aftermath of the code blue for the medical care team.
Disclosures:
In accordance with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education’s Standards for Commercial Support, adopted by the Joint Accreditors for Interprofessional Continuing Education, the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education has a conflict of interest policy that requires that all individuals involved in the development of activity content disclose their relevant financial relationships with commercial interests. All potential conflicts of interest that arise based upon these financial relationships are resolved prior to the educational activity.
Fernando Ona, Samuel Lowe, Steven Bingaman, Bethany Robertson, Amisha Metha, Jessica Star, Meredith Lora, Shirly Kooran, Beth Quatrara, Beth Turrentine, Danny Harris, Lisa Daniels, Kathy Lee Bishop, Jennifer Sharp, Caroline Coleman, Douglas Ander, Chase Corvin, Anastasia Pozdnyakova, Kelli Yukon, Allison Norenberg, Kimisha Cassidy, Kevin Roggin, Ross Milner, Vineet Arora
declare no vested interest in or affiliation with any commercial interest offering financial support for this interprofessional continuing education activity, or any affiliation with a commercial interest whose philosophy could potentially bias their presentation.
