Knowing and understanding all your resources in the hospital setting is so important in successful patient care. Let’s dive into what a rapid response team is, what their role is, and what they can do to help support you in patient care!
What is a Rapid Response?
Rapid response is a resource team in the hospital setting that can come to the bedside when a patient is declining to help prevent poor patient outcomes. Nurses can call a rapid response team to the bedside whenever they feel a patient is declining. This can be based off vital signs, lab results, visual decline, or nursing intuition. See your hospital policy for exact situations on when to call a rapid versus another resource nurse if your hospital has any.
Who Does a Rapid Team Consist Of?
Depending on where you are working, rapid response teams almost always consist of critical care nurses or other nurse specialists. But they can also be comprised of physicians (MD or DO’s), physician assistants (PA’s), and respiratory therapists (RT’s).
Rapid’s Role
The role of the rapid response team is to help the nurse assess and evaluate a patients clinical situation. They have additional training and experience providing care to declining patients that a non-critical care bedside nurse may not have. The rapid team can help stabilize your patient and contact the doctor with anticipated needs. They are there to support the nursing staff and educate them of all resources and options available in the moment. Rapid team members can determine if the patient needs to be transported to a higher level of care and assist in this transfer if necessary. The main role of a rapid is to help prevent a code once the nurse sees a decline in the patient but before a code occurs. A code, aka a code blue, meaning the patient has stopped breathing or their heart has stopped beating.
Calling the Rapid Team Versus Calling a Code
The difference between calling a rapid and calling a code can sometimes be confusing. If you can visibly see your patient declining, it can be tempting to call a code just to be prepared. But this is the exact time when you should be calling a rapid instead. You can ask a fellow coworker to bring the crash cart to the bedside just to be prepared but never leave your patient in this situation. The only time it is appropriate to leave your patient is if the rapid team is already there attending to your patient.
On the other hand, if you walk into your patients’ room and discover that they are unresponsive and either aren’t breathing or don’t have a pulse, then a code blue needs to be called immediately. You should be calling for help and starting compressions on your patient right away. You need to instruct someone to get the crash cart and the defibrillator pads need to be placed on your patient. Again, never leave your patient in this situation. When the code team arrives, someone will likely take over compressions so that you can give report to the code team. This report should include why your patient is here and what’s going on that made you call them.
Do your best to prevent a code blue situation by frequently monitoring your patient. This way you can easily detect a decline and call a rapid before ever needing to call a code. Always trust your nursing instinct in these types of situations.
For more information on a code blue, visit The Role of Code Teams in the Hospital Setting.
How Can They Help?
As previously mentioned, rapid response teams have different resources and can predict what is going to happen next in your patients decline because they are trained specifically for this type of event. Give your rapid team a quick report on why this patient is here and why you choose to call them. Make sure the patients’ doctor is looped into the situation and is aware of what’s going on. The rapid team may choose to call the primary treating doctor, or they may be able to put their own orders in. It really depends on who your treatment team consists of and what the situation is. But it’s always better to call a rapid than a code. So trust your nursing judgement, give a good report, and know your resources!
Remember that death is unfortunately an inevitable part of life and often seen in nursing. Visit How to Cope with the Death of a Patient for more info.
Do you work with a rapid response team? Comment below!
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