Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by js2 3147 days ago
> documentation is often a tertiary concern at best in large scale events like this...

People came in so grievously injured and so many at a time that Fisher, who is the medical head of trauma services for the hospital, and his colleagues used markers, writing directly on patients, to do triage.

When someone arrived, an emergency room physician would mark their wounds. It was quick, simple and impersonal by necessity.

Fisher says in those first few hours, the patients were functionally anonymous to the surgeons trying to save their lives. "There's no paper charts prepared for all those patients," says Fisher. "No documentation, so literally they just write on the patient. Just write where the wounds are."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/10/04/5555849...

> As far as infection control goes...

How soon do patients get antibiotics administered?

2 comments

Yeah, that's another common technique in extreme circumstances. You can sharpie a lot of info onto someone's forehead...
used markers, writing directly on patients

We did this in the Army.