Going vertical: triage flags improve extraction times for priority patients.

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Disaster Management
• Medical Simulation

Background:

• Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) are increasing, necessitating rapid patient identification and treatment.
• Current patient marking methods for MCI extraction lack a gold standard, with most using low-profile tags.
• Effective triage is critical for improving outcomes in high-priority MCI patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if a vertical triage flag improves high-priority MCI patient identification speed compared to traditional wrist tags.
• To quantify the reduction in extraction time when using a vertical cue in simulated MCI scenarios.

Main Methods:

• A prospective randomized crossover study involving medical students trained in disaster life support.
• Two simulated MCI fields with 32 pre-triaged manikins each, marked with either triage tags alone or tags with vertical flags.
• Measurement of the time taken to identify and report all high-priority manikins in each simulation.

Main Results:

• Eighty-two participants completed two extraction simulations.
• The flags and tags simulation averaged 70.7 seconds, compared to 94.5 seconds for tags-only.
• This represents a statistically significant 25.2% reduction in identification time (P < 0.0001).

Conclusions:

• Vertical cues, such as triage flags, significantly decrease the time needed to identify high-priority patients in MCI settings.
• Visually apparent triage markers enhance patient identification and extraction efficiency compared to flat tags.
• Improved patient identification speed holds potential for better outcomes in mass casualty events.