Staff taken hostage
Emergency colour code put into practice
Story by Pamela Dunn; photo by Derek Shimozawa
 It’s 0500 hours at Chinook Regional Hospital on a chilly February morning.
Patients are still asleep and the flurry of daily activity has yet to begin.
The silence is broken by a blaring overhead page: “Code Purple in the
Distribution Office, Room 1G403, I repeat Code Purple in the Distribution
Office, Room 1G403.”
Is this a real emergency? No. It’s all part of a well-orchestrated simulated
hostage situation.
Could it be a real emergency? Absolutely.
Here’s the scenario: a psychiatric patient has fatally injured another patient
and is attempting to escape the building. He has taken a hostage—a staff
member—and they are currently in the basement of the hospital, just down the
hallway from your location. What should staff do?
“Our objective was to practice the activation of our Emergency Colour Codes and
to give staff the confidence to know what to do if they’re ever faced with a
real-life situation,” says Emergency Colour Codes Coordinator Joyce Nay. “The
police responded to the mock hostage situation the same way they would have
responded in a real emergency.”
This simulation was organized by the South Zone Office of Emergency
Preparedness, with assistance from Lethbridge Regional Police and a crisis
negotiator. This gave Emergency Preparedness a chance to test the colour code
policy and to make sure it worked for the facility and for the community
agencies involved.
“Not only have we been able to the raise awareness of our emergency colour
codes, we have been able to identify the strengths and weaknesses in our codes
and make the necessary changes to become more effective,” explains Shari Van
Rijn, manager, Emergency Preparedness, South Zone.
Staff members agree that training scenarios go a long way in helping them be
ready for an actual emergency.
“The more people that are trained, the safer it will be for everyone in a real
emergency,” one participant commented in evaluation forms following the event.
Another added, “I would like to see a mock scenario for all the codes.”
The simulated Code Purple event was part of Colour Code of the Month, a safety
and awareness campaign first introduced in the former Palliser Health Region,
and one of the first major initiatives of the South Zone Emergency Preparedness
team.
Each month a different colour from the emergency colour codes is featured
through displays, education sessions and simulated emergencies.
“Our goal is to increase staff awareness and improve our ability to respond in a
real emergency,” says Van Rijn. | 