The operating room is a critical care area. On rare occasions very sick patients require advanced cardiac life support while in the O.R at NRGH. At minimum, the O.R. is staffed with 1 anaesthesiologist, 1 surgeon and 2 O.R. nurses. When a cardiac arrest occurs, the anaesthesiologist, who is trained in advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), calls a “Code Blue”. While waiting for the hospital’s Code Blue team to arrive the O.R. nurses support the anaesthesiologist with lifesaving measures. It is therefore part of the an O.R. nurse’s annual competencies to have Basic Cardiac Life Support.

The O.R. nurses felt it would be extremely beneficial in a “Code Blue” situation if they too were trained in ACLS in order to better support the anaesthesiologist. Due to the cost of ACLS training, the Hospital Foundation was approached for funding support. On November 18, six RN’s did the ACLS training and to date, the Hospital Foundation has provided funding for 28! The training has provided a tremendous boost to the O.R. staff’s ability to work as a team during these critical events and resulted in improved quality of support for the patients. Thank you to Life Safe Medical Training for providing a discount on the course fees and to our donors for making this support possible