scanSydney

I was listening to Nth Ops when I heard colour codes being used for accessing patients at a MVA.
Does anyone know what the colours mean ?

Adam

I assume this would be the "Between the Flags" program?

(sorry, the forum doesn't resize images for some reason, right-click on each image and open in new tab to view the full image)

Andrew, the 'Between the Flags' concept was introduced by NSW Health for in hospital use. You won't get it said publicly, but there were (are) so many nurses (many trained overseas) who have no idea of basic patient care. Here is a classic example: medication xyz given to patient, patients BP then drops suddenly. Nurse abc had no concept of the clinical situation that required intervention and just records it in the patient's notes and does nothing because they don't know or understand of how to deal with the situation. So they introduced the flags concept, nursing for dummies essentially. If a patient's vitals go outside of the defined parameters (the flags), then further action is required.

Adapad, for pre hospital colour coding (generally MCI's), most ambo services in Australia use green, yellow, orange, white and red:
Green = walking
White = dead
Red = life threatening
Orange + yellow = non life threatening

Wonky wrote:Andrew, the 'Between the Flags' concept was introduced by NSW Health for in hospital use. ~

True but I've read from a few sources* now that the ASNSW:

...will incorporate the principles of the BTF program into Ambulance practice.

So just an assumption on my part as to what the colour codes may have been?

* http://www.ambulance.nsw.gov.au/Media/d ... 3fe1-0.pdf

Thanks Andrew, interesting they are incorporating BTF for the Ambo's. The colours for BTF though are very different to their MCI protocols:

The Between the Flags and the Multi Patient Triage are two completely diferent concepts.

Multi Patient triage is a worldwide standard used to quickly triage multiple patients at the scene, eg. first amb crew arrives and reports 2 black patients, 4 red patients, 2 yellow patients and 15 green patients. This then allows for a quick snapshot to dispatchers of what sort of resources are requried, and governs how crews will treat patients in what order (no treatment at all to black (dead) patients.)

BTF is a way of identify a crook patient from a not so crook patient. It is a measure of where the vital signs (observations) of a patients fit into pre-determind thresholds. If a patient has all observations between the flags, they are relatively stable. If they have ob's outside the flags, this needs to be escalated for more frequent monitoring and rapid transport etc.
Its also a good way to liaise with hospitals booking transports etc as to their urgency - eg. "All obs between the flags except Heart rate which is 140" etc

Thanks monkey