Emergency room red area: what is it, what is it for, when is it needed?

By Cristiano Antonino On Jun 14, 2022

Red Area, what is it? The Emergency Room (in some hospitals replaced by the Department of Emergency and Acceptance or “DEA”) is an operating unit of hospitals expressly equipped to receive emergency cases, divide patients according to the severity of the situation, quickly provide diagnosis and treatment, send the most serious patients to special areas equipped to handle them, and have some patients stay in special spaces dedicated to brief observation

Precisely because so many different actions take place within an ER, it will necessarily have to be divided into various rooms, equipped in different ways.

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Main environments of an emergency room

The layout of a hospital emergency room varies depending on many factors, such as the size of the hospital, however it is generally equipped with:

a red room for the most serious cases;
one or more emergency rooms;
one or more examination rooms;
one or more rooms for brief observation (asthanteria);
one or more waiting rooms for non-emergency patients and for friends and relatives;
reception desks.

Red room in the emergency department

The red room (sometimes referred to as the “red area” or “shock room”) is an area of the DEA or ER, equipped with technologically advanced equipment and dedicated to the treatment of patients in particularly critical condition, i.e., those who, based on triage assessment, are “code red,” the most serious, who must not only be dealt with immediately, but who are often at high risk of death.

This environment houses all patients with significant changes in vital parameters, such as polytrauma, those with myocardial infarction, cerebral stroke, respiratory failure, cardiovascular arrest or severe internal bleeding.

Thus, the function of the Red Room is, simplifying, to manage, observe, and keep alive patients who come to the emergency room in a very serious condition.