The "Cruciform"® card has new features! The number strip/wristband, which includes bar codes, now has CBRN-E “Flags”© and a Victim Location Tag© for police investigations.
The bar code is a "universal" (Code 39) code, which means it is readable by any bar code reader. This means that ambulance services, police, fire brigades, hospitals, other emergency services, offshore medics, industry and the military can all use the system - true interoperability. By using bar codes, the possibility of victim number misreading is eliminated and the accuracy of victim and property tracking is considerably improved.
Organisations associated with victim handling or scene management, plus those charged with the post incident investigation will find the logistics of managing numbers of unknown people eased and the health services will be able to, more readily, track victims through their own procedures. Continuity of evidence will be improved, for coroner's inquests, and the local authorities will be able to plan their responses to relatives more effectively.
If the ambulance, fire brigade or police staffs "tag" the scene where the victim was when found, using the Victim Location Tag©, each organisation can then identify their records with the same number/bar code from the strip of numbers, as can the hospitals. Post incident investigation will be much more accurate and timely and organisational links and interoperability will be enhanced.
We also took this opportunity to slightly amend the contents of the “Cruciform”® card by adding the number/bar code to the pages where information might be entered. This means that, should these pages need to be scanned for onward transmission or to be copied into another record system, the number will also be copied. This will eliminate misfiling or incorrect assignment of the scanned document.
The new CBRN-E “Flags”© allow the rescuer to rapidly identify victims who may be contaminated by one or more of these agents so that anyone dealing with the victim, subsequently, can take appropriate precautions during handling. The nature of the suspected contaminating agent(s) and any actions taken to alleviate the effects of the contaminant can be identified inside the card on the
ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS/TREATMENT GIVEN/COMMENTS MODULE.
By using the bar coded "tag" kept by those involved as a linking system, attending rescuers will be uniquely identified for subsequent tracing, should that be necessary, either for police/coroner investigations, consular officials' enquiries or for prophylactic measures, if a victim is subsequently found to have been contaminated.
For all the foregoing reasons, these new features of bar code/numbers, Victim Location Tag© and CBRN-E “Flags”© will significantly improve victim handling, rescuer safety and investigative accuracy, while reducing the need for different types of pre-hospital documentation, as any victim can be identified and triaged with the one “Cruciform”© card system. |
