Triage of the sick infant

Learning objectives

• Define triage
• Identify personnel who can be trained to triage
• Describe how to triage
• Demonstrate triage skills

• Triage is the process of rapidly assessing all sick children when they first arrive in hospital and sorting them according to their need.
• Triage assessment can be done anywhere such as in outpatients, or the ward.
• Triage should be carried out, on arrival, to all new patients to the hospital.
• Triage can be done by any trained person – e.g. a health worker, a receptionist, a guard.

Those with life threatening illness must be seen immediately as EMERGENCIES, Those who are less sick must be seen next and are PRIORITIES

Those who are non-urgent cases can wait their turn in the QUEUE.

EMERGENCIES

The ABCCCD concept is used to identify emergencies. This is a logical and quick way of identifying how sick a child is; it does not take the place of a thorough examination to make a diagnosis but is a screening tool to identify problems that require immediate attention.

For triage we need to know;

Also see

• Resuscitation of the newborn
• Resuscitation of the Young Infant
• Management of shock
• Coma and convulsions
• Diarrhoea and dehydration

PRIORITIES

When emergencies have been excluded, signs and symptoms for priority are looked for. Priority signs can be remembered with the letters 3TPR, MOB. Remember that all infants less than 2 months of age are priorities. This is because infants can deteriorate rapidly; they are difficult to assess without a thorough examination; and to prevent them remaining in a queue exposed to infections from other children.

PRIORITY SIGNS are:

Tiny (less than 2 month of age) Temperature (high temperature as judged by your hand) Trauma

Pain Pallor Poisoning

Respiratory distress (not life threatening) Referral (urgent) Restless

Malnutrition Oedema Burns