Triage is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. The term comes from the French verb trier, meaning to separate, sift or select. Triage may result in determining the order and priority of emergency treatment, the order and priority of emergency transport, or the transport destination for the patient.
A trauma center is a hospital equipped and staffed to provide care for patients suffering from major traumatic injuries such as falls, motor vehicle collisions, or gunshot wounds. A trauma center may also refer to an emergency department without the presence of specialized services to care for victims of major trauma.
The National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT) is a national Emergency medical services professional association representing all EMTs and Paramedics. The NAEMT educational programs also have an international scope.
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.
In the United States, emergency medical services (EMS) provide out-of-hospital acute medical care and/or transport to definitive care for those in need. They are regulated at the most basic level by the federal government, which sets the minimum standards that all states' EMS providers must meet, and regulated more strictly by individual state governments, which often require higher standards from the services they oversee.
Advanced Automatic Collision Notification (AACN) is the successor to Automatic Collision Notification (ACN). To develop procedures that will help emergency medical responders better and more quickly determine if a motorist needs care at a trauma center after a vehicle crash, Center for Disease Control and the CDC Foundation recently partnered with OnStar and the GM Foundation. Through this partnership, CDC conducted a vehicle telematics initiative to develop evidence-based protocols for the emergency medical community to effectively use automotive telemetry data. By enabling responders to more quickly identify, diagnose, and treat injuries, these data will help to reduce death and injuries among vehicle crash victims. As part of this initiative, CDC convened a panel of emergency medical physicians, trauma surgeons, public safety, and vehicle safety experts. The panel considered how real-time crash data from the advanced automatic crash notification (AACN) vehicle telematics system and similar systems can be used to determine whether injured patients need care at a trauma center. By using a collection of sensors, vehicle telemetry systems like AACN send crash data to an advisor if a vehicle is involved in a moderate or severe front, rear, or side-impact crash. Depending on the type of system, the data include information about crash severity, the direction of impact, air bag deployment, multiple impacts, and rollovers. Advisors can relay this information to emergency dispatchers, helping them to quickly determine the appropriate combination of emergency personnel, equipment, and medical facilities.
Disaster medicine is the area of medical specialization serving the dual areas of providing health care to disaster survivors and providing medically related disaster preparation, disaster planning, disaster response and disaster recovery leadership throughout the disaster life cycle. Disaster medicine specialists provide insight, guidance and expertise on the principles and practice of medicine both in the disaster impact area and healthcare evacuation receiving facilities to emergency management professionals, hospitals, healthcare facilities, communities and governments. The disaster medicine specialist is the liaison between and partner to the medical contingency planner, the emergency management professional, the incident command system, government and policy makers.
The Brain Trauma Foundation (BTF) was founded in 1986 to develop research on traumatic brain injury (TBI). Since its formation the foundation's mission has expanded to improving the outcome of TBI patients nationwide through working to implement evidence-based guidelines for prehospital and in-hospital care, quality-improvement programs, and coordinating educational programs for medical professionals.
Emergency medical services in the Netherlands is a system of pre hospital care provided by the government in partnership with private companies.
A mass casualty incident is any incident in which emergency medical services resources, such as personnel and equipment, are overwhelmed by the number and severity of casualties. For example, an incident where a two-person crew is responding to a motor vehicle collision with three severely injured people could be considered a mass casualty incident. The general public more commonly recognizes events such as building collapses, train and bus collisions, plane crashes, earthquakes and other large-scale emergencies as mass casualty incidents. Events such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the September 11 attacks in 2001 are well-publicized examples of mass casualty incidents. The most common types of MCIs are generally caused by terrorism, mass-transportation accidents, or natural disasters.
St. Mary's of Michigan Medical Center is a hospital in Saginaw, Michigan, United States. St. Mary's is a subsidiary of Ascension Health, and is a teaching affiliate of the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine as well as Central Michigan University. The American College of Surgeons verified the emergency department as a level II trauma center.
Emergency Language Systems is a Maryland S-Corporation in the business of publishing Emergency Medical Services (EMS) language translation field guides. Emergency Language Systems maintains copyrights and trademarks for a series of books called EMSpañol. The company's founders are Jeff Dean, NREMT-Paramedic and Miguel Castañares, NREMT-Basic.
Trauma surgery is a surgical specialty that utilizes both operative and non-operative management to treat traumatic injuries, typically in an acute setting. Trauma surgeons generally complete residency training in General Surgery and often fellowship training in trauma or surgical critical care. The trauma surgeon is responsible for initially resuscitating and stabilizing and later evaluating and managing the patient. The attending trauma surgeon also leads the trauma team, which typically includes nurses and support staff as well as resident physicians in teaching hospitals.
A wilderness medical emergency is a medical emergency that takes place in a wilderness or remote setting at least 60 minutes away from definitive care. Such an emergency can require specialized skills, treatment techniques, and knowledge in order to manage the patient for an extended period of time before and during evacuation.
Wilderness medicine, providing "vital emergency care in remote settings" is a rapidly evolving field and is of increasing importance as more people engage in hiking, climbing, kayaking and other potentially hazardous activities in the backcountry. A primary focus of the field is the evaluation, prioritization (triage), preliminary treatment of acute injuries or illnesses which occur in those environments and the emergency evacuation of victims. However, back country rescue and wilderness first aid is not the sole activity of wilderness medical professionals, who are also concerned with many additional topics. These include but are not limited to:
Damage control surgery (DCS) is a technique of surgery used to care for critically ill patients. While typically trauma surgeons are heavily involved in treating such patients, the concept has evolved to other sub-specialty services. The leading cause of death among trauma patients remains uncontrolled hemorrhage and accounts for approximately 30–40% of trauma related deaths. This technique places emphasis on preventing the "lethal triad", rather than correcting the anatomy. Damage control surgery is meant to be used as a measure that saves lives. A multi-disciplinary group of individuals is required: nurses, respiratory therapist, surgical-medicine intensivists, blood bank personnel and others. While this lifesaving method has resulted in a significant decrease in the morbidity and mortality of critically ill patients, complications can result and do exist. This procedure is generally indicated when a person sustains a severe injury that impairs the ability to maintain homeostasis due to severe hemorrhage leading to metabolic acidosis, hypothermia, and increased coagulopathy. The approach would provide a limited surgical intervention in order to control both hemorrhage and contamination. This will subsequently allow for clinicians to focus on reversing the physiologic insult prior to completing a definitive repair. While the temptation to perform a definitive operation exists, surgeons should avoid this practice because of the deleterious effects on patients can result them succumbing to the physiologic effects of the injury, despite the anatomical correction.
Spinal precautions, also known as spinal immobilization and spinal motion restriction, are efforts to prevent movement of the spine in those with a risk of a spine injury. This is done as an effort to prevent injury to the spinal cord. It is estimated that 2% of people with blunt trauma will have a spine injury.
The Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) was initiated in 2008 by the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. Its aim is to provide risk-adjusted data for the purpose of reducing variability in adult trauma outcomes and offering best practice guidelines to improve trauma care. TQIP makes use of national data to allows hospitals to objectively evaluate their trauma centers' performance relative to other hospitals. TQIP's administrative costs are less than those of other programs, making it an accessible tool for assessing performance and enhancing quality of trauma care.
