Watching the Lewis Blackman film was difficult. There were multiple instances in my mind where I thought, “Oh maybe now they would call a rapid response” and yet, it never happened; so many caregivers, from the nurses and providers, had let it slip through them.
I’d like to think that the culture of my home hospital makes it safe for nurses to call an RRT without having the nocturnist and ICU coverage come in and shake their heads at the nurse who called it if it was just a false alarm, but sadly I’ve heard stories of the nocturnist yelling at nurses for calling an RRT unnecessarily. Playing Devil’s advocate, I would understand if the nurses were hesitant to sound the alarms. But it seems like even when the travel nurse tried to contact the attending about her concern for Lewis, she didn’t get the best response for Lewis and his mother.
As we start to have patient family members and visitors come back into the hospital, I think we need to be more mindful in including them during interdisciplinary rounds and keeping them updated with the plan of care and the patient’s status. And also, letting them be aware that they can also call RRTs themselves (we used to have posters in each room about it but took them down when we turned all our rooms into hepa filter rooms).