EMT Lesson Plans

8.10 EMS Operations Station: Triage Lab Objectives: Demonstrate how to perform triage based on a fictitious scenario that involves a mass-casualty incident. (pp 1394–1399)

Preparation: Deploy all patient figures on the tabletop. Deploy 2 EMTs, 1 Ambulance, 1 patrol car, and 1 cop as responders.

Read to Students: You are called to a local park for a company picnic where a disgruntled employee has shot several of the staff. You are the first arriving unit and the police are on-scene.

What Should Happen (you may need to coach them through this):

Goal 1: Make sure the scene is safe and appropriate resources are on the way The police have secured the scene. Discuss how many units might be needed and what type of unit based on the patient load. At a glance, 10 BLS units and about 4-5 ALS units might be a reasonable start. Goal 2: Remove the ambulatory from the triage burden The crew should instruct the ambulatory off to a specified location using the PA system. Those patients are all green automatically.

Goal 3: The crew should go to the nearest patient and triage him/her

Some crews might want to dedicate one individual to scene command and triage with a second. That’s probably OK, but there isn’t much to command right now on the medical side. You might as well get more triaging done.

Goal 4: Continue triaging until all patients are triaged

Continue triaging patients until all patients are completed. As the triage burden gets smaller (1-2 patients) it might be OK to rotate crews out of triage and into treatment of reds, as long as there is still someone to triage the last couple of patients.

Goal 5: Treat all RED patients Crews should be assigned to treat and transport red patients Goal 6: Treat all YELLOW patients Crews should be assigned to treat and transport yellow patients

Goal 7: Treat all GREEN patients Crews should be assigned to treat and transport green patients. BLACK patients will likely not be treated. You can give the students additional Ambulances with 2 EMTs during the scenario as you see fit. Move them in and out of the tabletop as needed. If they summon a helicopters you can optionally give them a helicopter. If you give them paramedics, they should be treating and not triaging (the ALS scope of practice offers no advantage in triage, but it does help during treatment).