Resident Files: Clinical Change Management with Codes on the Go

Following a retrospective review of 2019 data, the rate of arrest in the cardiac ICU at Children’s Hospital Colorado was found to be higher than the national average reported by the PC4, the Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care Consortium, which includes 23 large institutions. The Heart Institute developed the Cardiac Arrest Reduction and Excellence (CARE) program to reduce the rate of cardiac arrest at Children’s Colorado. Part of the simulation branch of the CARE program, the Codes on the Go program uses mobile bedside simulations targeted at the most frequent causes of cardiac arrest in the CICU. Simulation provides a safe environment to experience realistic clinical situations, perform clinical skills and improve self-efficacy.

Listen to pediatric experts discuss Codes on the Go

In this episode of our Resident Files series, Children’s Colorado resident Nadia Hoekstra, MD, and fellow Joe Zakhar, MD, join us to discuss how our resident and fellow teams collaborated with leadership from the Children's Colorado Pediatric Heart Institute to implement the Codes on the Go program.

In this episode, our experts discuss:

• Creation and goals of the Codes on the Go pilot program
• Development of the brief simulation model
• How the project utilizes tenets of education
• Example of a clinical scenario used in the pilot
• Data being collected for each simulation
• Goals for long-term measurement of retainment of skills
• Data on cardiac arrest rates since initiation of the program
• Lessons learned and future directions for Codes on the Go

Treatment of heart problems at Children’s Colorado

The Pediatric Heart Institute at Children’s Colorado is one of the largest programs in the country, treating patients with heart problems from before birth into adulthood. Our program is nationally ranked for heart care and surgery, and our cardiac experts treat more than 20,000 patients each year with exceptional outcomes.