Re. the meaning of the title “Code Clear”

In hospital culture, “Code Clear” means that the medical emergency has been resolved and hospital staff can resume normal activities. In this drama, I think “Code Clear” refers to four incidents in Episode 3. Let’s start with the obvious one.

1. when Prof. Cha preempted the Congresswoman from filing a lawsuit

She was understandingly distraught to learn that her son died. The subs are from dramacool.

Prof Cha: I’m Cha Jinman, head of the Trauma Center. I’m in charge here.
Director Park: This is provincial assemblywoman Ko Kyungsook.
Prof Cha: Yes, I’ve heard.
Congresswoman: My son is dead. These doctors neglected my son, and now my precious son is dead.
Prof Cha: I am sorry about your son. But he wasn’t neglected. He just wasn’t our priority.

She turns to look at him.

Prof Cha: In trauma, we don’t treat patients based on who arrived first. We must treat patients who are more urgent.

True.

In times where patients outnumber the medical staff and/or equipment available, the hospital has no choice but to assess the patients’ medical conditions and prioritize those in life-threatening situations over those with less urgent needs. As many of us know, this process of organizing the patients according to their injury or illness is called triage. Also, as many of us know, this system works well if the triage is only for a short period of time, and the nurse doing the assessment is competent. It works well because it focuses only on the medical emergency and ignores the status, wealth, or connections of the patient.

However, Prof Cha’s argument is sophistry or specious reasoning. Unless the subs are incorrect or missed some translation, the Congresswoman isn’t demanding that her son should be seen FIRST by the attending physician or given preferential treatment before the other casualties. She’s merely stating the fact that the doctors neglected her son. It’s indisputable that the chief ER physician failed to give her son medical attention when he was admitted because he was distracted by other things, like Dr. Jung’s incompetence and the arrival of more patients.

Congresswoman: He died. And you say it wasn’t urgent? That’s why he wasn’t a priority? Do you think you can convince me with those words?
Prof Cha: I’m not trying to convince you. I’m explaining it to you.
Congresswoman: If that’s the case, you can explain it in court. I’ve already decided to file criminal charges.

Here, the Congresswoman is lashing out as a mother She wants heads rolling and people punished. But when she says that she’s filing criminal charges, she’s probably aware that medical malpractice is generally a civil case, not a criminal case, at least here in the US. For one, the state prosecutor won’t be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the medical professionals at the Trauma Center are guilty of killing her son. It’s hard to prove that the doctors and nurses intentionally neglected her son in the observation room out of malice or depraved indifference. For another, it’s much easier for her attorney to win a civil suit and to hold the hospital liable for her son’s wrongful death because of the evidence caught on CCTV.

Prof Cha: Do you perhaps know who the more urgent patients were beside your son? They were your secretaries. One was in cardiac arrest and the other was in a coma with a ruptured liver and lung. And I just finished operating on one of those two patients. In comparison, your son was conscious enough to speak to you on the phone. When we asked him how he felt, he didn’t complain of any particular aches or pains.
Congresswoman: (looking away)
Prof Cha: If you were a doctor, who would you have judged was the more urgent patient?

She isn’t a doctor, so her opinion as to who the “more urgent” patient was, is irrelevant. That said, any reasonable person can see that:

(i) the medical staff (i.e., the attending ER physician) had a duty and obligation to provide medical care (i.e., “standard of care”) to her son,
(ii) that doctor failed,
(iii) a similarly trained doctor would have provided the standard of care if he/she was in that same situation,
(iv) the medical staff’s action (or in this case, inaction) fell below the standard of care,
(v) the death of her son occurred because of the medical staff failure to follow the standard of care.

Prof Cha is trying to obfuscate the issue here.

Congresswoman: Look here. I’m a politician, not a doctor.
Prof Cha: By that do you mean you don’t care about your secretaries’ lives and that your son is the only important patient?

No. I wish he’d stop putting words in her mouth. That’s not at all what she’s trying to say. She’s saying that she isn’t a trained medical professional so her non-medical opinion is immaterial when it comes to triage-ing the injured patients. What she wants to say is that she doesn’t begrudge the medical attention her secretaries received. Nonetheless, her son should have been seen by a physician in a timely matter since he was in the same accident as the other secretaries, and the medical staff (e.g., nurses) should have monitored his vital signs properly.

If her attorney was to review the CCTV, he/she would have seen the footage of Dr. Jung getting distracted on his way to see the son, and attending to other “less” serious patients after the two secretaries’ crises were dealt with.

Congresswoman: (shouting) Look here!
Prof Cha: Not once, ever since I stepped foot in the room, not once did you ask how your secretaries were doing.
Congresswoman: (shocked)

Prof Cha is appealing to emotions here. He’s trying to guilt-trip her and paint her as the bad guy. For one, it’s natural for a grieving mother that she would have no other thought on her mind but her dead child. For another, he greatly exaggerates the length of time he’s been in the room and speaks as if he’s been discussing the son’s death for hours. In reality, (check the time) he’s only been in the room for less than three minutes.

Prof Cha: Besides, they are paid by the government to aid you govern the province, So why is it that they were driving your son during work hours? It’s not like your teenage son would’ve been performing public duties. If you decide to file charges, go ahead. People threatening doctors to sue for malpractice isn’t really surprising to us anymore. I’ll see you in court. But you will have to answer all the questions, all the questions that I asked you.

I would like to call him a scumbag, but I can’t blame him for finding the Congresswoman’s “Achilles’ heel.” She values her political position more than justice for her deceased son. She doesn’t want to be discovered using government employee for personal business, and embroiled in a political scandal.

Then, he walks out taking Dr. Jung with him. Outside, he addresses Dr. Jung.

Prof Cha: It’s sad that a patient has died. But I hope you don’t blame yourselves too much or feel too guilty. You are the ones who are doing your best in every moment to save a patient in all emergency situation. Nobody can blame you. I won’t let anyone blame you. Dr. Jung Insu. Stand up straight.

The hospital administrator, Dr. Jang, is visibly impressed with Prof Cha.

Dr. Jang: What was that? They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. I didn’t know he would be so cool.
Nurse Oh: You think he’s cool? Is that how you see it?
Dr. Jang: He saved Dr. Jung from a crisis. He went in and took care of business. He took his junior’s side and said his piece. That’s how the head of the Trauma Center should be. Honestly, I’m so relieved.

And this is what the title of the episode “Code Clear” is referring to. To all intents and purposes, Prof Cha succeeded in stopping the Congressman from suing Dr. Jung and/or the hospital for medical malpractice. It’s “Code Clear” because the “emergency situation” arising from the potential lawsuit was resolved and everybody can go back to their regular activities.

Nurse Oh: Look here. You feel relieved? A 17-year-old boy just died. That woman in the room is not an assemblywoman or a politician. She’s a mom who has lost her son. Can’t you see that?
Dr. Jang: What? Well…that’s…

The two other instances of “Code Clear” are the following.

2. when Dr. Seo earned Prof. Cha’s professional admiration

This is rather self-explanatory. Working together on the operation, Dr. Seo is able to impress Prof Cha with his surgical skills. This, in turn, paves the way for him to come clean about his relationship with Cha EunJae (EJ).

“Code Clear” for him and EJ means they can resume normal dating activities.

3. when Master Kim succeeded in getting Dr. Seo to work at the Trauma Center

He anticipated Dr. Seo’s refusal to work with Prof Cha so he prepared many scenarios. His Plan A was to get the ER doctors to appeal to Dr. Seo. When his Plan A didn’t work, he activated his Plan B which was to enlist Dr. Yang in an operation.

No wonder Director Park and the other two ER doctors went to see him.

He expected Dr. Seo to worry about Dr. Yang’s incompetence. I like that he even had a Plan C in the works involving Director Park.

“Code Clear” here means that Master Kim succeeded in transferring Dr. Seo to the Trauma Center as he’d envisioned, and the Trauma Center could now resume operations.

However, I think Master Kim made a tactical error and his Plan B had an unfortunate repercussion. By using the incompetent Dr. Yang as a pawn to force Dr. Seo to work in the Trauma Center, he unwittingly saddled Dr. Jung with an incompetent doctor whom he had to “baby-sit.”

In my opinion, Master Kim is also at fault. I don’t know what Dr. Jung’s contribution was in Seasons 1 and 2, but Master Kim should have checked that Dr. Jung was competent at his job and fired him if he proved to be unwilling to learn and perform up to standards. Master Kim was also negligent in his duty to manage his staff, especially Dr. Jung.

4. last, when the son was left by himself in the Observation Room

“Code Clear” can also refer to the way the medical staff treated the son. Because he didn’t exhibit any symptoms or signs of distress, he was “cleared” from life-threatening danger. The staff around him resumed their normal business. There was no urgency to attend to him right away.

Nurse Oh: Dr. Jung, there’s one more patient in the observation area. He’s in his late teens. His injuries seem minor, but I think you should still check.
Dr. Jung: Yes. Ms. Oh.

Also, I think the other doctor was at the entrance with Nurse Oh when the student was wheeled in. He should have checked him out then, but he seemed to have disappeared. I was surprised when Nurse Oh referred the student to Dr. Jung instead.

Unfortunately, because the student was “cleared,” it was lights out for him.

“Lights out” means death. 🙁

Addendum: This is a note in passing because I read so many viewers’ comments about medical malpractice on drama sites. Remember: we’re not in law school; this doesn’t constitute legal advice; we’re talking about dramas in this blog.

When we watch somebody die because of medical negligence in kdramas — just like what we saw in this episode – the screenwriter often uses this a plot devise for a medical malpractice claim. I wish more writers would explore a wrongful death claim.

Most viewers assume that the congresswoman is going for medical malpractice, and it’s easy to understand why because we can see medical negligence everywhere. There was medical negligence, nursing negligence and hospital negligence (e.g., incompetent doctor on staff, not enough staff, no protocols in place, operating when the center isn’t fully functional, and so on).

However, the malpractice claim is for injuries and damages suffered by the SON from the time he was wheeled into the Trauma Center up until his death. When you rewatch the scene, you’ll see that he endured minimum physical pain and suffering from the negligence of the doctor, nurses, and hospital. He said he was cold; he was given a blanket. One minute he was holding his phone, and the next, his hand dropped on the bed, indicating loss of consciousness and eventual demise.

To me, a wrongful death claim can be more substantive and “impactful” than medical malpractice. The son seemed to be an only child. The congressman can claim medical negligence but seek damages for HER mental and emotional distress caused by the wrongful death of her only beloved son.

This way, she can also gain sympathy from her constituents who’ll overlook the misuse of public funds and instead commiserate with the public grieving of a mom.

Prof Cha should know – and Nurse Oh clearly does – that a mother’s grief trumps most anything.

To be continued tomorrow. Hopefully.