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Paediatric major incident triage — DIPIMC MCQ

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HardMajor Incident ManagementPaediatric major incident triageDIPIMCDipIMC

At a nursery fire with multiple paediatric casualties, you are triaging the children with the appropriate major incident tool. One casualty is an 18-month-old who is not obviously critically injured but is very young. How does the tool handle a child of this age?

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Correct answer: D — A child below about two years of age is assigned Priority 1 by default

The paediatric major incident triage approach assigns a child below about two years of age to Priority 1, reflecting the difficulty of rapid assessment and the vulnerability of the very young. Triaging a small child exactly as an adult ignores important physiological differences. Placing a young child in a delayed or expectant category on the basis of age would be unsafe. Pearl: the very young are prioritised because deterioration can be rapid and harder to detect.

Reference: NHS England Major Incident Triage Tools (paediatric); APLS