Event
In November 2015 the European Board of Anaesthesiology (EBA) made a recommendation for the establishment of a standard Cardiac Arrest call telephone number in European hospitals and recommended the number 2222. A standardised emergency number throughout Europe would reduce the incidence of confusion and delays by staff having to find out the correct number for each hospital when a patient has a cardiac arrest and they try to summon the resuscitation team.
Press Release
European Standardisation of the in-hospital ‘Cardiac Arrest Call’ Number – 2222
The European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, the European Resuscitation Council and the European Board of Anaesthesiology have today issued a joint statement calling upon European hospitals all to use the same internal telephone number (2222) to summon help when one of their patients has a cardiac arrest.
The European Board of Anaesthesiology (EBA) and European Resuscitation Council (ERC) and the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESAIC) together recommend that for Patient Safety all European Hospitals standardise the internal telephone number used for a Cardiac Arrest call to the number 2222.
Action checklist
→ Most hospitals can easily make this change locally https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(16)30583-4/fulltext
→ Meet and discuss with colleagues, nurses and resuscitation trainers, nurses are most important as they are the staff who make the most of these calls.
→ Use the 2222 presentation downloadable from here 
at meetings.
→ Discuss with patients groups/representatives if available
→ Discuss with / send a letter to Hospital medical director/management (see template letter)
→ Discuss with switchboard colleagues the technical issues.
→ If possible continue to run the old number and 2222 in parallel for a period. If you can monitor both numbers use, continue to use two numbers until the old number is no longer used. If a new switchboard is being planned in the future it could be part of that programme.
→ Choose a suitable date to change and tell everyone.
→ Raise awareness, train staff, organise publicity, notices and posters.
→ Put stickers on every phone
→ Make the change on the appropriate date
→ Remind staff about the change
→ Thank staff and management for taking part in the process
→ Please report your successful change to ESAIC HQ by emailing psqc@esaic.organd share any learning suggestions about how to improve the implementation process that can be passed onto other hospital wishing to also make the change.