Any hospital emergency room is a total chaos on a normal day.
Throw in a situation where multiple victims arrive at the same time and it is true mayhem.
Emergency room protocols are what keep the hospital emergency room running smoothly and help doctors and staff make the proper call as to what patients are treated first.
Hospitals will use the same protocols when multiple victims arrive as military field hospitals.
Anyone who has ever watched M.
A.
S.
H.
will be somewhat familiar with how doctors make a quick diagnosis in order to find the patients most in need of care.
This format was actually first used in World War l.
Doctors break patients down into those that will die regardless of any care they receive, those that will live (and can wait for care), and those that are in life and death situations.
Patients who are going to die regardless of their treatment are often made as comfortable as possible until they pass.
It is a decision doctors do not make lightly, but one that is necessary in order to treat patients in need of care who actually have a chance of survival.
Those that will live and not in need of emergency care are forced to wait until the final category, critical patients who have a chance of survival, are taken care of by the doctors.
In military settings, patients are sometimes marked with some type of band as to their condition.
This enables the staff to move them in the order of their priority.
In massive emergencies, there may actually be different levels of critical to address those that can live for longer periods before needing surgery.
Without these triage protocols, the emergency room would be total chaos.
Doctors would have no idea how to treat patients or in what order they need to be treated.
This initial diagnosis allows them to create some sort of organization among chaos.
In many cases, the few minutes doctors and staff take to make their quick diagnosis will save many lives.
While nobody likes to be put at the back of the line, especially when they are injured, it is important to realize that these controls are in place to save lives.
Causing difficulty or making a fuss when doctors are trying to help those that are in a life and death situation is surely not going to make things better.
However, patients need to accept the protocols in place and realize that injuries will be addressed according to the threat they pose to a person's life.