Code Blue (U.S. television series)

Code Blue was a television documentary series which aired on TLC and currently airs on the Discovery Health Channel.

Premise

Code Blue was conceived as a limited-run series focusing on a single hospital, Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and documented the lives of the physicians and their patients. It also illustrated the diverse culture of New Orleans. Patients with gunshot or stab wounds were often featured, illustrating the high crime rates in the city. Occasionally, an episode would focus on an element of a physician's personal life outside the hospital. For example, one episode documented a physician's second career as a minister.

When TLC canceled Trauma: Life in the ER,a similar series, NYT Television still had 3 months worth of unused footage from Memorial Health Trauma Center in Savannah, Georgia. To make use of the footage, TLC revived Code Blue as Code Blue: Savannah. The new series featured a different narrator and tone to more closely resemble Trauma.

Featured prominently in several episodes was Dr. Eduardo Marvez-Valls, coordinator of the E.R. and trauma residents. Dr. Valls, revered as a dedicated teacher and physician, was openly homosexual and suffering from end-stage AIDS. He did not perform tasks that would involve excessive exposure to needles, such as suturing or IV insertion, but he continued diagnosing and treating patients in the E.R. until his death from AIDS-related kidney disease in 2006 at the age of 52.