Fortunately, few of us have had to triage 5, 17, 31, or more patients at a mass casualty incident. Unfortunately, our triage skills and equipment stagnate from infrequent use. The goal of Triage Tuesday is for EMS and hospital staff to periodically triage patients using START and JumpSTART (or other triage method). Regular use of triage skills should improve competency and capability of EMS and hospitals in managing multiple trauma victims during a real incident. Regular use of triage skills and tag should also increase knowledge and comfort with triage tags.

Participating in Triage Tuesday is simple. Collaborate with your most common destination hospital to choose a weekly or monthly day to practice triage—it does not have to be a Tuesday. On the chosen day EMS providers will triage all medical and trauma patients with a triage tag. You can use your existing supply of triage tags or some other type of marking method like low cost surveyors tape. Document assessment findings and patient information on the triage tag—as you would during a MCI. When an EMS service transfers patient care to the emergency department include the patient’s triage severity and triage tag information in the hand-off report. Hospital emergency departments may also participate by triaging all or some walk-in patients with a triage tag.

Your turn: Does your agency regularly practice triage? What works well and what doesn’t? Please share in the comments.

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“MCI Triage” is an iPhone App for EMS paramedics, ambulance officers, firefighters, law enforcement and other emergency service personnel to help manage mass casualty incidents. It builds on the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment (S.T.A.R.T.) system, originally developed in 1983.

With simple button prompts and on-the-fly calculation of triage categories, “MCI Triage” makes it easy to determine which colour tag to use and to automatically record each victim’s condition as well as their age, gender and location.

As well as calculating the victim’s triage category (Alpha, Bravo, Delta or Echo), the application also gathers the victim’s age category (Infant, Child, Teen, Adult or Elderly), gender (Male or Female) and if time permits, their name or a brief description (e.g.. “red t-shirt”). Each victim’s location is automatically added to their record using the iPhone’s built-in GPS.

At any time, you can flip to a Summary tab to see how many victims there are in total and how many are in each Category (Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo). You can email full details or an Incident Summary using the iPhone’s mail application to incident control, EMS/fire/police dispatch, receiving medical facilities or anyone else who needs timely information on which to make decisions.  The Incident Summary by SMS to one or multiple mobile or cell phone numbers.

Even if your MCI triage training was years ago, this application will prompt you through the process and ensure consistent and reliable information is gathered and made available to incident command.

You can find “MCI Triage” in the Medical section of the iPhone App Store.

• Download Link: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mci-triage/id355467271?mt=8
• Documentation: www.islandsoftware.com.au/MCI_Triage.html
• Further information: info@islandsoftware.com.au

Read related posts and tips:

1. Press Release: Triage Link App for the iPhone and iPad Divergent Technology, a Vermont company, has created an iPhone/iPad application...
2. Press Release: iPhone Scheduling App for EMS Professionals Brice Bingman, a Computer Programmer with Northrop Grumman Corp., recently...
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