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12 - Triage

from PART II - OPERATIONAL ISSUES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

By
Christopher A. Kahn ,
E. Brooke Lerner  and
David C. Cone
Edited by
Kristi L. Koenig  and
Carl H. Schultz
Kristi L. Koenig
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Carl H. Schultz
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

OVERVIEW

Introduction

One of the hallmarks of a disaster is that the immediate needs of the affected population exceed currently available resources. Intuitively, this leads to the question of how limited resources can be used to optimize patient outcomes. Triage is the allocation of limited resources during a disaster. Although the concept of triage is applicable to all resources, the most commonly discussed and most studied application is to patient care. In this context triage is the rapid evaluation of patients to determine the most appropriate level of care and treatment, given the limited resources at hand. For the remainder of this chapter, triage shall refer specifically to identifying the appropriate level of care for patients during a mass casualty incident.

Although researchers have investigated this type of triage more extensively than the triage of equipment or other resources, even patient triage is not well studied. As with many topics encompassed by disaster medical sciences, it is extremely difficult to conduct randomized, controlled trials during an actual event; the use of other comparative study designs is also challenging. As a consequence, there is no high-quality evidence indicating which triage systems provide optimal resource utilization or maximal outcomes, or even whether existing triage systems are of any value in managing the scene, optimizing resource allocation among patients, or ensuring optimum outcomes.

Keywords

disaster triageJumpSTART triagepediatric triage tapesecondary triage systemspediatric-specific systemsprimary triage
Type
Chapter
Information
Koenig and Schultz's Disaster Medicine
Comprehensive Principles and Practices
 , pp. 174 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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