Triage tag


A triage tag is a tool first responders and medical personnel use during a mass casualty incident. With the aid of the triage tags, the first-arriving personnel are able to effectively and efficiently distribute the limited resources and provide the necessary immediate care for the victims until more help arrives. Triage tags were first introduced by Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, a French surgeon in Napoleon's army.
Simple triage and rapid treatment is a strategy that the first responders and medical personnel employ to evaluate the severity of injury of each victim as quickly as possible and tag the victims in about 30–60 seconds. The triage tags are placed near the head and are used to better separate the victims so that when more help arrives, the patients are easily recognizable for the extra help to ascertain the most dire cases.

Design

A triage tag is two-sided, but the actual layout of the sections vary between and within countries and between governmental agencies. Design is often in the form of a fold-able card, to allow the state of the victim to be clearly visible. It is now common to use triage tags to allow first responders to have a better handle of the victims during a triage. There is no universal agreement in the design of triage tags, so each authority has implemented their own version to meet their needs.

Dynamic

Popular Triage Tags including Cruciform and the Smart Tag allow casualties to be re-triaged without having to replace the tag.

Standard sections

Typically, the basic sections of a triage tag may include:
Other features may include:
A benefit in using the triage tag, besides improved traffic flow and effectively distributed care among injured patients, is data collection and dissemination. The fill-in slots on the triage tags do not need to be filled out all at once. Information can be obtained and added onto the triage tag throughout the triage, and referred to as needed.
If a patient's medical condition changes while still in triage, medical personnel can simply tag the patient again with the updated information and label the tags sequentially. The other option is to use a tag which can be altered so that the priority level can go up or down. This eliminates the need to re-tag the patient.

Examples