Disaster Triage Color Tagging

Triage often refers to grouping or ranking. At a disaster situation or in the ER, patients need to be triaged based on the presenting signs. This allows medical and paramedical personnel to immediately attend to patients with severe symptoms, while other patients can be seen afterwards.

In a disaster situation, there can be many injured or wounded, but the personnel and resources available may be limited. Hence, these personnel and resources need to be allocated wisely. And this is exactly what the disaster color-coded triaging tagging system proves helpful.

Disaster Triage Color Tags

A wounded personis tagged a color based on their health status. Read on to understand what the four colors are and what they stand for.

Red Tag: Immediate (First Priority)

Recall the red traffic light. It tells you to stop, doesn’t it? Similarly, when a patient is tagged red, you need to STOP and help them get urgent treatment. Red tagging means first priority in receiving care.

Many injuries can be life-threatening but patients could possibly survive them, if immediately treated.

Conditions that may cause an individual to be tagged red include major alterations in breathing, circulation, and neuro system. This could be the result of –

• Spinal cord injuries (Spinal cord is responsible for breathing, neuro and cardiac functions)
• Severe internal or externalbleeding
• Significant burns on a large percentage of the body (Burns can affect the circulatory and respiratory system)
• Some types of major respiratory trauma: pneumothorax etc.
• Major and complex fractures that require emergency treatment

Yellow Tag: Delayed (Second Priority)

The yellow traffic light tells you to slow down or delay. Likewise, a yellow tag indicates the treatment can be slowed down but only about an hour or so because they could turn critical because of their injuries.

Patients tagged yellow may have suffered significant injuries but their breathing, circulation, and mental status is within normal range so far.

Conditions that may cause an individual to be tagged yellow include –

• Bone fractures that require medical treatment
• Integumentary damages: open wounds, deep lacerations etc.

Green Tag: Minor

Just like the green traffic light telling you to go, green tag patients can get up and move around since their injuries are minimal.Treatment for such patients can be delayed for several hours since their breathing, circulation, and mental status are stable and not expected to change.

Black Tag: Expectant

Black tag denotes that the wounded individual is dying or expired. Their injuries are fatal to the point the individual would not survive. Common signs include absence of breathing, circulation, and/or mental status.

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Southwest Synergistic Solutions Joined: December 28th, 2018