A 94 year old man is admitted to the hospital with septicemia on account of a ruptured diverticulum in the addomen. He has no family available. The attending comes late in the evening and the nurse addresses the patient with him. She also wants to know the code status of the patient. The attending checks for advance directives but finds none. Looking at the advanced age of the patient he writes down for a "Slow code". During the night, the patient goes into cardiac arrest - Ventricular fibrillation. Code is called. What should you do?

1. Let the code team handle it and you should not go as you are busy with another patient
2. Go slowly towards the patients room because it is a slow code
3. Go quickly to the patient's room and run a code in a normal way
4. Go quickly to the patient's room and tell everyone concerned that this is a slow code
5. Go to the patient's room quickly and run the code yourself but just in a slow pattern

Answer is 3

Slow code - Never

In earlier days, when doctors would see a patient in whom the prognosis was poor, they may have ordered  "slow code". It used to mean that give a half hearted attempt of resuscitation to document it on the chart.

I have heard of it during training from some old-timers but never should this be an option.  Nowadays if the attending decides that the intervention (CPR) will be futile, the attending has the right to decide that NO code should be performed. Even though , technically it is the right answer for the exam, rarely does one see that as a unilateral decision as the attending discusses and convinces the family before doing this.