But You Have to Know How to Call the “Rapid Response Team”

Hospital patients are monitored in many ways, with all kinds of equipment and visits from doctors and nurses — but sometimes they and/or their loved ones just know something’s not right. Now some hospitals are empowering patients to demand medical attention within minutes, providing an intervention that lies somewhere between a call-the-nurse button and the frenzied “code blue” that signals the need for immediate lifesaving measures.

Rapid response teams — also known as medical emergency teams — are now available to patients in nearly 3,000 US hospitals. I asked Kathy D. Duncan, RN, who has helped hospitals implement these programs as a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, to tell me about this initiative.

A New Way to Get Help Quickly

The purpose of these rapid response teams is to get help to a deteriorating patient quickly even if the danger is not yet life-threatening. Response teams are made up of several types of health-care professionals, often including an ICU nurse, a respiratory therapist and a physician, with the goal of providing bedside attention within five minutes. Results can be dramatic. An Australian hospital reported that implementing rapid response teams reduced in-hospital deaths from cardiac arrest by 56% and overall deaths by 25%.

How to Use a Rapid Response System

If you or a loved one is admitted to the hospital, you should find out whether there’s a rapid response system and, if so, how to use it. Some use a special hotline number accessible from all hospital phones, while others tap a nurse to summon the rapid response team. The premise is that all requests from patients and their caregivers will receive immediate attention.

I asked Duncan what types of situations merit using the system. She cautioned that this system should not be used to report problems that are merely uncomfortable or inconvenient — like an IV that’s pinching or late delivery of a meal — and said that symptoms such as pain, pallor, clamminess, trouble with or altered breathing, confusion or garbled speech are good examples, because these may indicate that a patient’s health is deteriorating. The first step should always be to bring the problem to the attention of the on-duty nurse, but if he/she doesn’t respond to your satisfaction and you are still worried, you may activate the rapid response system. “This should solicit ‘additional eyes’ to assess the patient,” said Duncan.

Rapid response systems empower patients and loved ones to speak up and be heard — but smart health-care professionals realize that this approach also empowers them — getting input directly from a patient or someone close to him/her can alert doctors and nurses to subtle but perhaps very important signs of distress. With very sick patients, warning signs may develop hours or even days before a life-threatening occurrence, such as internal bleeding or cardiac arrest. Reporting and addressing them promptly can mean the difference between life and death.