| On Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 our weekly training session took place at the firehouse with a focus on EMS training.
This week's subject was proper triage of a mass casualty incident and introductory training of the "SMART Triage System."
The goal of triage at an emergency which involves multiple patients is to quickly and appropriately determine which patients are the most severely injured and require the highest transport priority.
With a multitude of facilities and highways in our service territory, we could -- and have -- experienced incidents which involve numerous injured victims. This training and triage system is designed to improve our skills which will be needed in order to efficiently manage a situation.
The "SMART Triage" system was provided by a grant from the Chester County Department of Emergency Services and this in house training is required for all of our EMTs in order to follow the regulations of the grant.
Each SMART Triage kit includes multiple triage tags which will be placed on patients with a different priority level and color to indicate what priority the injuries are on each patient, in order to quickly identify the most injured patients first. In addition, pediatric triage supplies, contamination tags, glow sticks, and a full tracking board are included.
After Assistant EMS Chief Gongloff trained our personnel on the use of the SMART Triage System, Chief Sly simulated a mass casualty situation and assigned various personnel to different roles in an incident command system. This was a great learning session to give various members a better idea of how they may be required to participate and assist in the time of a large scale emergency.
Thanks goes to those members who spent the evening training on this new system.
More information on the SMART Triage System can be found here:
http://www.tsgassociates.co.uk/English/Civilian/products.htm |
