In these instances, it is ideally performed rapidly, with 15–60 seconds spent categorizing each patient according to the colors red, yellow, green, and black. While it is practiced throughout medicine by first responders and emergency room personnel, we usually think of triage in terms of mass casualty incidents, or incidents in which the number of casualties overwhelms medical personnel and resources. Modern triage closely mirrors its Civil War counterpart and is based on the principle of doing the greatest good for the greatest number with the available resources. With the implementation of this system of triage, wounded soldiers were given a better chance of survival and went into battle knowing they would not be left on the battlefield for days waiting for help. For example, there were about 200 reported cases of trephining (drilling a hole in the skull to relieve swelling in the brain or remove foreign objects like bullets or bone fragments), which had a 43 percent survival rate! Such serious wounds weren’t necessarily a death sentence for soldiers. These patients were made as comfortable as possible and set aside until time allowed-not due to cruelty on the doctors’ part, but because they simply lacked the knowledge and technology to treat those kinds of wounds at the time. Lowest priority were wounds that pierced the trunk of the body or head: what were normally mortal wounds. Mild wounds included excessive bleeding with the patient in stable condition and were evacuated after all the severely wounded were removed from the battlefield.įacebook | Twitter wounds were minor enough to allow patients to be sent back to their units. These were taken by the ambulance corps to the nearest field hospital for immediate care. Severe wounds included serious bleeding, compound fractures, missing limbs, or major trauma to the arms and legs. Patients were sorted using the following criteria: severe, mild, slight, and mortal. Here, the wounded were administered first aid and sorted according to the seriousness of their wounds. This is where triage was first performed. The first stop of Letterman’s plan was the field dressing station, located as close to the battlefield as possible. They remain today a basis for modern EMS and military combat medicine. In March 1864, Congress implemented Letterman’s changes across the entire Union Army. Letterman reorganized the Medical Corps and created a system of medical evacuation designed to care for wounded soldiers from the moment of injury through long-term recovery, which became known as the Letterman Plan. This changed on July 4, 1862, with the appointment of Major Jonathan Letterman as Medical Director for the Army of the Potomac. Jonathan Letterman-advancements that still influence us today.Īt the outset of the Civil War, no organized system of medical care and evacuation existed. Although triage was not used as a medical term until World War I, it was integral to the Civil War–era advancements made by Dr. The term “triage” is derived from the French word “trier,” meaning “to sort.” Triage has been practiced in the military at least since the Napoleonic era. While the guidelines vary by state, they have one common thread: giving priority to those who are most likely to recover if given treatment. Especially in the pandemic’s early days, public health officials took steps to establish triage guidelines for hospitals to follow should the number of critically ill patients outweigh, for example, the number of available ventilators. The colossal hospitalization numbers from the COVID-19 pandemic have, at various points, forced hospitals in the United States to make hard choices regarding who receives life-saving treatment and who does not. How Medical Triage Went Mainstream During the Civil War | HistoryNet Close
0 kommentar(er)
