Small victims, big challenges: Pediatric disaster education, triage and response

Children are particularly vulnerable to disasters. Disasters overwhelm medical resources and test the training, abilities and capacities of healthcare systems. Primary triage serves as the first step toward organizing a chaotic situation with many patients, mitigates the disaster-related vulnerabilities of pediatric patients, and promotes communication among on-scene responders. Triage is vital to decisions about on scene treatment, transport from the scene and destination choice for definitive care. During this lecture, we will explore pediatric disaster triage, from initial emergency medical services efforts, to secondary triage as the event progresses, to sorting large numbers of patients arriving at emergency departments.