In CERT training, you learn five basic skills to help you help your neighbor in the event of a disaster. None of the skills are technical or complex. Mostly they are common sense. Medical operations for example, isn't really about performing medical operations - like brain surgery - it's about how a first aid station works, how it operates.
 
Triage is one of the five CERT skills. The others are fire extinguishing, light search and rescue, medical, and disaster psychology. But triage stands out for two reasons: it's French for "to sort out" and it is probably the hardest skill to learn.
 
It should be French for "sort of" because actually most CERT students sort-of get it, but still have difficulty doing it.
 
The difficulty is a result of over-thinking the problem.
 
Triage is not a new skill. Triage is about sorting. Everyone knows how to sort. Just because it is called triage, doesn't mean you have to speak French to do it.
 
It comes naturally. If you've ever built a jigsaw puzzle, before you started putting the pieces together (operation), you sorted out all of the edge pieces (triage).
 
Even young children know how to do it. Remember your two-year-old hitting his head on the coffee table? There's that moment of silence as he evaluates his needs. If he decides he's hurt and wants attention, he starts to cry. If not, he goes on crawling across the carpet.
 
Parents learn to do it instantaneously: kid falls off the trike; parent hears crying, runs out, sees kid standing in the driveway looking at the scrape on his knee. Parent thinks: no problem. He's crying (no obstruction to his airway). He's standing (no broken bones). He's bleeding (but it's not spurting or flowing). No need to dial 911. That's triage. That's all it is.
 
CERT training teaches triage as a separate function in which the CERT has 30 seconds to determine a victim's RPM (respiration, perfusion, and mentation). Or, in English, is the victim breathing? Are they bleeding? Are they disoriented? That much analysis, as in the example of the parent, can be done in a single heartbeat. The other 29 seconds can be used to address any issues. Head-tilt-chin-lift for breathing, pressure and elevation for bleeding, a question or two for mentation.
 
The difficulty in learning triage as a CERT skill is that students, experienced in triaging small-scale emergencies, are taught the same skill in the context of a widespread disaster. The context is completely different. In an emergency, triage and medical ops are a shift in thinking. The goal is to reduce the suffering of the victim. In a disaster, there are separate teams for triage and medical ops. The goal of disaster triage is to sort victims for the medical ops team so that those needing immediate attention are cared for first. The simple process of evaluation somehow seems more complicated.
 
As a CANDO CERT, remember that when disaster hits the Churchill neighborhood, triage will come naturally to you. Just remember the context. There will be will be more than one victim, but you'll know what to do.