Families Can Now Activate VUMC Rapid Response Team

A growing number of hospitals are giving families of patients a new tool to call for emergency help.

Now, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, they can contact the hospital’s rapid response team without waiting for a nurse to assess the situation. The team of doctors and nurses has the job of handling emergencies when a patient’s own physician isn’t there or needs extra help.

Dr. Brad Strohler chairs the Rapid Response Committee at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. He says families are given instructions at admission for using the room phone to trigger immediate help when they notice troubling changes in condition.

“We didn’t want to give the message that ‘you need to watch your patient because we’re too busy,’ but that, ‘you have an extra layer of knowledge about your child that we’ll never know.”

Strohler says people close to a patient will often notice problems at times when a nurse is not in the room, or will catch subtle changes that someone who doesn’t know the patient wouldn’t easily notice.

Initially, Strohler says there was concern that families might abuse the system by calling in the team for situations that would be better handled by the floor nurses. He says that hasn’t happened.

“Most of our parents are in tune with their children’s needs and also very respectful of the time constraints of our team. If anything, we’ve seen the opposite, where the families don’t want to be perceived as a bother.”

In cases where families are hesitant to call the unit themselves, Strohler says just understanding what emergency system is available seems to make loved ones more likely to quickly communicate concerns to their nurses. He says that’s caused the unexpected result of nurses calling in the rapid response unit more often than before.

The new system is in place at both the children’s hospital and VUMC’s main facility.