Health-care units are required to be able to take action in case of disasters. To succeed in catastrophe victims’ treatment, it is essential to adjust the work of a traditional emergency department to the needs of mass casualty incident management (Ugarte, Amsalu, Tieffenberg, Romig, & Vu, n.d.). Fast reaction, instant decision making, and good cooperation are vital at the initial stages of mass casualty. However, the strong prioritization of victims by the correctly chosen mass casualty triage system plays a decisive role in the management of disaster outcomes. It allows classifying the patients depending on the severity of their injuries for proper treatment and transportation to save lives (Ugarte et al., n.d.). In this essay, a disaster case scenario is analyzed from the perspective of the selection of a particular mass casualty triage system. According to the algorithm of medical workers’ actions in the scenario the START triage system is selected as the one utilized for rapid evaluation and treatment under the conditions of a catastrophe.
The case scenario suggests that the victims of a disaster are gathered at one point (parking lot) and are assessed by a physician. The physician categorizes the patients according to the severity of trauma or injury. Those in critical condition are taken to the emergency department. The patients having a moderate degree of injuries are provided with medical assistance at the point of gathering or placed in a queue in the emergency sector. According to the described situation, the mass casualty triage system selected for this particular emergency situation is the START.
Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment is a method of quick assessment of the victims’ vitals for prioritization of the following treatment and transportation. As well as any other triage, START is used to foresee the clinical consequences (Bhalla, Frey, Rider, Nord, & Hegerhorst, 2015). According to this algorithm, the decisions about the priority of treatment are made only by the severity of injury “regardless of age, gender, profession, or any other factor” (Ugarte et al., n.d., p. 26). Based on the analysis of the symptoms all the victims are divided into the green (minor injuries), yellow (medium), red (emergency need), and black (deceased) group (Ugarte et al., n.d.). Therefore, this approach makes rapid identification of the most traumatized victims possible which enables saving lives under the conditions of a disaster.
To reason the choice of the triage system, it is essential to associate the actions carried out in the scenario with those anticipated by the triage. The choice was made between SALT and START. However, START’s simple procedure and a transparent system of categories make it efficient and applicable in the case of emergency (DeNolf & Kahwaji, 2018). For the physician and the emergency nurses working with the victims in the parking lot, a concise list of patient symptoms within each category specified by this system would simplify the process of health condition evaluation. Also, a clear coloring classification would accelerate the process of victims’ treatment in the order of the necessity of emergency treatment.
Concluding the discussion, the mass casualty triage systems are developed to accelerate and improve the efficiency of the immediate treatment in the case of a disaster for rapid treatment of the most severely injured patients. The choice of the triage, as well as its proper utilization, is vitally important for saving peoples’ lives. Medical professionals have to practice the useful algorithms of treatment and transportation of disaster victims to be able to manage the outcomes of mass casualty incidents.
References
Bhalla, M.C., Frey, J., Rider, C., Nord, M, & Hegerhorst, M. (2015). Simple Triage Algorithm and Rapid Treatment and Sort, Assess, Lifesaving, Interventions, Treatment, and Transportation mass casualty triage methods for sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 33(11), 1687-1691.
DeNolf, R. L., & Kahwaji, C.I. (2018). EMS, mass casualty management.Statpearls Publishing. Web.
Ugarte, C., Amsalu, R., Tieffenberg, J., Romig, L., & Vu, T. (n.d.). Module 3: Planning and Triage in the Disaster Scenario. New York, NY: Sage. Web.