‘Code White’ calls are on the rise at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Here’s what that means

We’re getting a better idea of the number of violent and potentially dangerous incidents unfolding inside one of B.C.’s biggest and busiest hospitals.

Inside hospitals, there’s a code used when patients are violent or acting in a dangerous manner and there’s fear the situation could escalate.

It’s called a Code White.

And Surrey Memorial Hospital, which has one of the busiest emergency departments in B.C., is experiencing an upward trend in these.

Within Fraser Health, “Surrey Memorial Hospital does see the most violent incidents. It does see the largest number of Code Whites,” explained Quinn Danyluk, Fraser Health’s interim executive director for people, health, wellbeing and safety.

Following a request from CTV News, Fraser Health said that in the first seven months of this year, there were 634 code whites at SMH, a 9.5 per cent increase over the same period last year.

There were 125 incidents of reported violence.

“The situation at Surrey Memorial Hospital has sort of reached a crisis point,” said registered nurse Peggy Holton, who is also the B.C. Nurses Union regional chair. She said there were about 85 Code Whites at SMH just last month.

Holton recalled one particular incident earlier this year, when a nurse was unexpectedly attacked by a patient.

She said the patient “got violent and he actually threw a nurse up against the wall and the nurse was in a chokehold.”

She said a doctor had to intervene to help the nurse.

Danyluk said, “Every violent incident, whether it’s a code white or a violent incident, is something we take very seriously. Every single one is fully investigated.”

While Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster had 76 reported violent incidents from January to July 2025 and saw an 11 per cent decrease in code whites, Danyluk said Fraser Health is looking at what may be responsible for the rise in Surrey.

“We’re seeing an uptake in the patient population that we serve. There’s just a lot happening in society. A lot more challenging, complex cases of patients that we’re managing,” he explained.

Calling for more nurses, Holton said patients waiting up to 10 hours in the emergency at SMH only heightens frustration.

“We often have people pull out weapons. We’ve pulled out everything from knives to guns, to, you know, a chainsaw at one point in time,” she said.

Holton said for more than twenty years there have been calls for a weapons detection system at hospitals like Surrey Memorial, but so far that hasn’t materialized.

AI weapons detection technology is already used in other parts of Canada and Fraser Health is considering a pilot project.

“We need to look at the safety, the efficacy, the ethical privacy impacts, costs,” Danyluk explained.

Health Minister Josie Osborne said in a written statement that, “Violence has absolutely no place in any workplace, including the hospitals and health-care facilities where people go to get help and support to feel better.”

She said there are more than 780 specially trained security officers, called relational security officers, at 32 hospitals and other health-care facilities.

Osborne said this has resulted in an eight per cent decrease in violent incidents at sites in only one year.

Fraser Health said Code Whites are often initiated as preventative measures to help de-escalate situations before they escalate into violence.