By Gary Meyer, TME

The verb triage means to assign degrees of urgency to injured or ill patients.

It can seem, at times, to be more of an art than a science, but triage ends up being a mixture of both.

Triage workers must act quickly, follow a clear set of criteria to assess a person’s level of urgency for treatment of injuries and, above all, stay focused on the job without becoming emotionally distracted by the situation.

These were among the important concepts taught by Steve Glaseman and Michelle Wright during a training of CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) members in Pine Mountain Club on Saturday, March 26.

Students were told they would have 30 seconds to evaluate each victim in the imaginary scenario of an incident involving many casualties. They would note each person’s level of urgency by “tagging” them with a color-coded tape before moving on to the next.

A medical professional normally performs this assessment at accident scenes involving injuries. In a mass-casualty event, however, professional first responders will not…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

Steve Glaseman and Michelle Wright teaching triage.

Team members Nick Novosel and Sue Vanderford got 16 out of 20 triage choices correct.

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This is part of the April 1, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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