What are Hospital Emergency Codes?
Hospital Emergency Codes are used in hospitals worldwide to denote to staff various kinds of emergency situations. The uses of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with a minimum of misunderstanding to staff, while preventing stress or panic among visitors to the hospital.
Hospital Emergency Codes are coded by colour and currently in Ontario some colour codes denote different events at different hospitals. The Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) has determined that a uniformed code system is essential. The goal of OHA is to standardize the Hospital Emergency Codes by colour, description and use a standard language. A tool kit for Code Standardization is presently being developed by OHA with a tentative release date of Spring 2008.
| Name of Code | Incident |
| Code Red | Fire |
| Code Blue | Cardiac Arrest |
| Code Green | Internal Evacuation |
| Code Yellow | Missing Patient |
| Code Black | Bomb Threat |
| Code White | Violent situation |
| Code Brown | Chemical Spill |
| Code Orange | External Disaster |
| Code Purple | Hostage/Abduction |
| Code Grey | Loss of essential services |
