Hospitals should replace emergency codes with plain language

Abstract

The common and frequent use of emergency codes by hospitals to communicate during life-threatening emergencies routinely segregates hospital staff from patients, visitors, and first-responders during emergencies by providing each group with a different level of information regarding the threat. By relying on codes instead of plain language to communicate during an emergency, a hospital may introduce ambiguity into a potentially life-threatening situation. Consequently, this means that coded alerts may endanger staff, patients, and visitors rather than protecting them from threats. This paper will maintain that (1) relying on codes, even standardized color codes for hospitals, interferes with the full integration of health care into the National Incident Management System (NIMS); (2) that planning to use plain language notifications improves coordination among response partners and ultimately increases safety for hospital patients, staff, and visitors; and (3) that the change to plain language is both practical and possible. This paper identifies both real world events and studies that demonstrate the benefits of using plain language alerts with directive messaging to elicit the desired response among members of the public during emergencies. This paper also presents guides that hospitals can use to transition from coded emergency messaging to plain language emergency alerts.