War Zone Triage Essay

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2008, developed the initiative “Run, Hide, Fight” as a response strategy to an active shooter event. In the event of an active shooter they suggest run or evacuate first, if evacuation is not possible, hide and barricade doors, and as a last resort, fight back if your life is in imminent danger (DHS, 2008). All public places are vulnerable to active shooter attacks, but hospitals differ due to the vulnerability of its patients. Evacuation may not a possibility for all patients, as some may be non-ambulatory due medical conditions, or incapacitated due to anesthesia or sedation (e.g. surgical patients, ventilator dependent). Another factor increasing patient vulnerability is the patient’s ability to understand commands (e.g. Dementia, language barriers). In order to establish effective preparedness strategies, they should be tailored to the hospital environment and specific units (Cormier, 2016; Jacobs et al., 2017).

These consist of bomb alerts, fire evacuation and first aid. These procedures are produced to give help to everyone at the place of the emergency. Everyone, especially adults must be aware of what to follow during an emergency to ensure everyone stays safe.

1. A physician is called to the intensive care unit to provide care for a patient who received second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body due to a chemical fire. The patient is in respiratory distress and is suffering from severe dehydration. The physician provides support for two hours. Later that day the physician returns and provides an additional hour of critical care support to the patient.

The emergency services need to be called, and given all the correct information, such as, if you are with the casualty now, how many people are involved, the patients age/gender, if they are conscious. Computer software then uses this information to determine the priority of the call which is then categorised into emergency or non emergency.

Triage is usually the first step of the emergency room and helps determine severity of each patient. Once through triage, the patient

This study will include nurses that are currently working in emergency department with at least six months of experience with varying ages and levels of education. The emergency nurses would be required to complete a formal training on understanding the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) algorithm and the complexities in accurately assigning a triage level. The level of competence of the nurses will be increased if they participate in the online educational opportunities. In addition to the formal course, an online acuity level triage designation course will also be implemented. The ED leadership team will be instrumental in encouraging staff to participate so they are adequately prepared to function as a triage

They carry three lightweight, Deployable Rapid Assembly Shelter (“drash”) tents that can be attached to one another to form a 900-ft2 facility. Supplies to immediately resuscitate and operate on the wounded arrive in five backpacks: an ICU pack, a surgical-technician pack, an anesthesia pack, a general-surgery pack, and an orthopedic pack.” They have come up with new ways to check for certain problems without big, expensive, and heavy equipment. Instead of using radiography or angiography equipment, surgeons feel for fractures and if necessary use braces in an attempt to fixate the bones.

If these sites are not broken down into smaller section there would be mass confusion on which individual to treat first. That way it is important to separate by category and injuries. Explain why triage, treatment, decontamination, and morgue areas should be separated from one another. Triage treatment is very important because it separate your least injury to the most critical individual. Starting with the minor injuries which are not life threaten these individual would more likely receive care last. But on the other hand Delay victims require stabilization and will survive for several hours once stabilized. For the more immediately injuries these individual will be make it if treatment is receive on a timely fashion.

Triage is the categorizing of patients by order of who needs to be seen most urgently. It can be broken into three stages; emergent, urgent, and non-urgent. Emergent is immediately life or limb threatening. An example of an urgent case would be a dog that ingested half a bag of grapes 45 minutes ago or a male cat with a suspected blocked urinary tract with no urination for the past 12 hours or more. Urgent needs to be treated but is not life threatening or limb threatening if left untreated for several hours. An example of an urgent case would be a puppy that jumped off the couch and is now lame on its front right leg or a bird that comes in with a broken wing after a brief scuffle with the household cat.. Non-urgent should be treated but time is not a factor. An example of a non-urgent case would be

The system they implemented categorized the patients the patients with a number 1, 2 or 3; 3 assigned to the terminally ill or with patients with DNR, which would be evacuated last. Disaster Triage operates according to a different ethical approach, the utilitarian ethical theory. Making a life or death decision that a patient will consume too many resources and must go into the dead or dying category falls against the normal ethical principles that normally guide medical staff in daily practice (journal of ethics

The benefits of having personnel trained with a tactical medic background can be extremely beneficial in many different situations. Tactical medicine can be implemented to save time, and lives, as well as educating individuals and crews on what to look for and how to react to an unstable and unsafe scene.

Medical, trauma, and emergency knowledge was needed in assessing victims of the attacks, in deciding who needed or did not need medical care and in which order was most beneficial to the time and for the greatest use of supplies available. The days, weeks, months, and years required to recover from these incidents not just in the hot zone, but medically and mentally have set forth implementation of how we focus our efforts before, during, and after hazards strike. The affects of September eleventh, have taught us as first responders and government officials valuable information on disaster response and recovery efforts.

I do think that utilitarianism is the foundation for triage systems. Patients and medical personnel that seek to use of triage are categorizing the patients accordingly but are keeping in mind the available us of limited medical resources. The principle of utility remains in regards to which the benefits are to be maximized. In the triage system, medicals personnel seek to accomplish the health benefit of saving the most lives. To maximize the chosen benefits, the triage system may dictate treatment right away for some while delaying care for others. In utilitarianism, bad consequences may be acceptable if the action produces the greatest overall benefits.

(1) Dispatch medical personnel to the accident site as needed via ambulance or helicopter, whichever permits earliest arrival and evacuation of injured.

Triage in the pre hospital setting is the process of determining the priority of patient 's treatments based on the severity of their condition, the order and priority of emergency transport, or the transport destination for the patient during major incidents and disasters resulting in a mass casualty situation. Triage, by definition, is a dynamic process, as the patient 's status can change rapidly. The aim of mass casualty triage is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of casualties. Three triage systems are currently in common use in the developed world including START, Careflight, and the Triage Sieve and Sort.