What does it mean medically to say "a patient coded"?

Question

What does it mean medically to say "a patient coded"?

Answer 1

what greydoc said.

I'm guessing they chose blue because that is the color of the patient!

Answer 2

The American version of English has a knack of coining new words whereby nouns become verbs and vice-versa. But in this case, when a patient coded, it means some life-threatening event occurred that required the attention of the hospital's (paramedics', etc) emergency response team.

It stems from the advent of public address systems in hospitals. It was soon discovered that having the operator announce: "a patient in Room 252 is dying" was disturbing to other patients and visitors. Ambulance chasers and undertakers would cause congestion in the hallways. To prevent this, hospitals developed a system whereby the operator would announce a "Code Blue" in room 252. And rather than have every orderly and janitor rush to the scene, hospitals organized "emergency response teams" to respond to the code. It took awhile before the public caught on, but obviously they did, probably even before Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, MD, and Marcus Welby came on TV.

I don't know the significance of the color blue being associated with the code, but it was present back in the 1950s when I worked as a lowly orderly.

Answer 3

coding is a system used to inform select people that an event has taken place and that their assistance is needed immediately. Most often in a hospital setting, I would think, you will hear code blue and that usually means a patient has had a cardio-pulmonary event and needs immediate assistance from the special team.  Often when a code is called on a patient it will be shortened to only coded after the event.  It is simply hospital speak for the patient had an event and was in serious trouble.

Some codes are simply informative such as the hospital is at full staff or hardly no one showed today because of the flu or such. Plan on working your *** off.

Answer 4

it means they had a cardiac event which stopped their heart.

Answer 5

It means that the patient had a respiratory or cardiac arrest.  That is, their heart stopped or they stopped breathing.  In the hospital setting, it is a bit less disturbing to call a code blue to a certain room than to announce that a patient is dying.  

By now, through the advent of medical shows, most of the general population knows what a code blue means.

Answer 6

that either their heart stopped beating or they stopped breathing. or both. if in the hospital we would call a "code blue" and revive them if able etc.