Slow code
Only a couple of the ones on the main list are really in common use--"craniorectal syndrome" (patient has his head up his ass) and "slow code", but I think he misses the spirit of that one:
Sometimes, a very ill, very elderly, or very hopeless patient wants the doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive. And sometimes, doctors don't want to do that: it's too much work, the patient will die anyway, or the person just isn't worth preserving."Slow Code" is usually used when one physician is checking out to another and describing the patients on his service. Sometimes a patient has zero chance of surviving the hospital stay--very sick to begin with, bad heart, multi-organ failure, not triggering the vent, maxed out on pressors, etc.--but, for whatever reason, there is not yet a "no code blue" order. "He's not a no code," you might tell your colleague, "but he's a slow code."
That doesn't mean you won't go and do everything you can possibly do, it just recognizes that there isn't much you'll be able to do.
That still sounds more cruel than it is, because it's really the opposite of cruel. If you haven't been around for a code, you don't know what a frenzied, chaotic, and truly violent thing it can be. It's no way to spend one's last few minutes on Earth if it can possibly be avoided. A patient in the state I'm talking about has an infinitesimal chance of surviving the code, so it seems cruel that instead of letting him go with his family at his side we shove them out of the room and crack all of his ribs doing chest compressions. We'll still do it, but we'll feel bad about it.
