_Sunday. December 9, 1990 - North Shore News - 33

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LIFESTYLES |

The visualization of Code Orange

Video of LGH’s emergency plan
proves to be an international winner

TRAGEDY HAS struck the North Vancouver waterfront.
A building has collapsed and at least 50 people have
been injured. All will be transported to Lions Gate Hospi-

tal.

As ambulances race to the
scene, Code Orange has been ac-
tivated at LGH.

As the Code Orange alert is
broadcast over the hospital's in-
tercom system, nurses drop what
they are doing and hurry back to
their stations for instructions.

Soon the injured begin to arrive
at LGH’s emergency ward. As the
patients, many of whom are
covered in blood, are wheeled on
stretchers into emergency, a nurse
gives them a quick examination in
the lobby and instructs the am-
bulance attendants where to take
them.

A second nurse scribbles down
on a blackboard the locations of
where each patient is sent.

But fortunately, this is only a
mock accident.

There has been no building col-
lapse, and there are no injured
people. But had this been a real
emergency and not a training ex-
ercise, would LGH staff know
what to do?

By activating Code Orange,
LGH is putting into action its
disaster plan. Each department
has a copy of that plan, but LGH
Officials felt not enough of their
staff knew the disaster plan ex-
isted and, therefore, would not
know what to do in the event of a

Shades of

hi

By Surj Rattan
News Reporter

real Code Orange emergency.

“There was a need to educate
them.’’ says Gillian Harwood,
LGH’s director of critical care
nursing.

The hospital then turned to
North Vancouver resident Chris
Carter and his Vancouver-based
Creative Media Productions com-
pany, which specializes in making
videos for corporate clients.

Carter understood the message
LGH wanted to get across to its
employees and what better way
than to make a video about the
hospital’s disaster plan.

As videos go, this one was sim-

It’s main objective, says

, was to get the message
across to LGH_ staff that a
disaster plan existed and what
each department’s responsibilities
would be if Code Orange were
ever activated.

That simple video was entered
in the prestigious John Muir Med-
ical Film Festival in San Francisco
and managed to beat out about
650 other entries from 15 coun-
tries to capture the top award in
the critical-care category.

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“Our goal in the video was to
help the staff Jook into their
responsibilities should a disaster
oceur,"’ Carter said. ‘‘Every
aspect of the hospita! has a role to
play. We were commissioned to
try to use visual imagery to help
the staff learn that there is a Code
Orange manual. Our job was to
inspire within the employees a
desire to go and look and find out
what is going on.””

Carter and his crew first inter-
viewed LGH’s education depart-
ment to determine what message
to convey to their employees. He
added that in today’s society the
best way to convey a message is
through visual communication
because it captures a person's at-
tention more than any other me-
dium,

“ff a disaster were to occur on
the North Shore, the hospital
plays a major role. If they
(employees) don’t know what their
role is, there’s going to be chaos
in the hospital,”’ said Carter.

Carter used actual hospital per-
sonnel, professional actors and
actresses and drama students from
Handsworsh Secondary School in
the video.

Actual ambulance attendants
were also asked to participate in
the video. Carter also purchased
television news footage of earth-
quakes in Mexico and San Fran-
cisco as well as the Save-On-Foods
building collapse in Burnaby.

See Hospital page 37

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield
CHRIS CARTER of Creative Media Productions put together a
video tape for Lions Gate Hospital to educate hospital staff about
Code Orange, or the facility's disaster plan. The award winning
video has prompted LGH staff to find out more about the haspi-
tal’s disaster plan.

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