Code Lavender: Transforming the Human Experience in Healthcare

by M. Bridget Duffy M.D.
Chief Medical Officer, Vocera

Topics Covered:

Transforming the Experience

April, 2018

We all know our healthcare codes—Code Blue requires the most urgency in the restoration of a patient’s clinical condition. The Code Lavender® system is an integrative healing equivalent of a Code Blue. Code Lavender services consist of a rapid response team of specialists, who are called upon when an individual—patient or her family or an employee—has reached her emotional limit.

Everyone has seen it happen—especially in large hospitals other health care facilities: staff, patients and family members who have fallen victim to fatigue, despair, and generally negative feelings which counteract all attempts at healing. The busy routine of hospital life centers around high-tech equipment that is constantly bleeping at patients and staff, and stress and anxiety permeate every room and every mood. As a result more and more hospitals and health care facilities have come to the realization that it is vital to all successful treatments that both employees as well as patients and their families feel that they have the mental and emotional excess strength and energy to cope with challenging situations. In this regard, the Code Lavender integrative medicine services become a valuable tool that can help ensure that individuals will not only be able to go on after being presented with a difficult case, diagnosis, or loss, but will also be capable of reacting in a fashion that will result in better care and in better healing.

The philosophy of integrative medicine and other healing approaches adopted at North Hawaii Community Hospital (NHCH) was outlined in the hospital’s manifesto by Earl Bakken, who served as its first board chairman. In his paper, “Project 2010—A Vision of Health Care in the Twenty-First Century,” Bakken, a lifelong proponent of improving and transforming the patient experience, formulated what he believed a hospital should ideally be like in the year 2010. Bakken was in a situation where he was seeing a general deterioration in healthcare, and thus he envisioned a scenario where integrative medicine consisting of 20% drugs and 80% spirituality would be the norm, and where a hospital would be a place of healing, a building where architecture and every component worked towards that goal. At NHCH high-tech and high-touch came together in what Bakken calls blended medicine.

Experience Innovation Network’s Code Lavender integrative medicine program embraces the spiritual services of pastoral care, and offer a truly holistic solution including reiki, touch therapy, aromatherapy, music therapy, social work, guided imagery, and nutrition and wellness services. Where the Code Lavender program has been implemented the numbers speak for themselves. In a 2008 survey of patients receiving Code Lavender therapies at the Cleveland Clinic, 93% of patients surveyed said that the Code Lavender services they received were helpful, and 90% said that they would recommend these services to others.

lavender field at sunset

Employees of the Cleveland Clinic accounted for 40% of all requests for Code Lavender services during the period covered by the same Cleveland Clinic survey. An incredible 99% of employees surveyed reported that Code Lavender services met or exceeded their expectations, and 98% of employees surveyed reported that they would recommend the Code Lavender program to a friend. The willingness among employees to call for a Code Lavender intervention on their own behalf or that of a colleague speaks to the necessity of implementing a coordinated effort to fight off secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and general burnout.

Experience Innovation Network has successfully implemented the Code Lavender program at some of the foremost healthcare institutions in the nation, and so we know the arduous process of writing and shepherding the policy through the many channels and administrative layers. We know that it takes hard work across the many departments involved but we also know the end results and we firmly believe in the greater good that the Code Lavender services bring to modern healthcare.

We have developed a proven strategy for the implementation of the Code Lavender program with guidelines for interventions. We have also developed the tools to monitor the conditional developments of recipients of Code Lavender services and to measure the impact of the Code Lavender program on the well-being of patients, their families and employees. Our team stands ready to share their experiences and function as guides to develop a better patient experience.

To learn more about Code Lavender and Experience Innovation Network, contact us.

*previously posted on http://www.duffycxo.com