A crash cart is an integral component of emergency patient care. Although most emergency departments use these carts to treat cardiac arrest, they can also treat other emergency conditions and ensure that providers can promptly attend to patients at a high risk of serious morbidities and mortality.

During a code, knowing where your supplies are located on your crash cart is just as important as having everything necessary. Navigating your way through a hectic code is much easier when you have the right items and an organized system for your crash cart. Here are some tips.

No matter the size or location of your hospital, your crash carts are going to serve a similar function: to provide you with the necessary equipment and medications to respond to cardiac and respiratory emergencies. Though variations will exist depending on hospital policies, type of unit, and typical patient population, you can expect most crash carts to follow the same framework of fundamental supplies.

You are sitting at the nurse’s station catching up on some charting at the end of your shift. It has been a smooth 12-hours; all of your patients have been cooperative and everything has gone as planned. Suddenly, the daughter of one of your patients comes running out of the room, yelling that her mother just lost consciousness and doesn’t appear to be breathing. You grab the crash cart and call a Code Blue.

You never know what a shift might bring. Each time you report to duty, you have no idea what the day will hold. Which is why you must be prepared for anything. Whether it’s a natural disaster that suddenly descends on your community or an MCI on the interstate, sending critical patients to area hospitals and closing major thoroughfares, you and your crew must be ready for whatever unfolds.

As a nurse, you know what to expect to find in a crash cart. From the defibrillator to the IV supplies to the resuscitation medications, everything in the cart has its specific place and purpose. The consumable supplies are restocked after they are used, and the durable medical equipment is properly cleaned so that it is ready to use for the next code.