10 free EMT practice questions: Patient Count & Triage (MCI)

Delayed (yellow): fits a patient who passes all three START checks, walking wounded aside, and can wait a bit for treatment. This patient fails the mental status check by not following commands and only moaning, so the normal respirations of 20 and the strong radial pulse cannot offset that failure. Treating two reassuring findings as decisive here averages the checks instead of screening for the worst one.

Minor (green): covers the walking wounded, patients who can ambulate to a treatment area on their own with only minor injuries. This patient cannot walk, which is the first determinant in START, and also fails the mental status check, so this option answers the mobility question alone while ignoring the more severe finding.

Expectant (black): reserved for injuries so severe that survival is not expected given available resources, a category built for catastrophic trauma, not for altered mental status alone. This patient has a normal respiratory rate and a strong radial pulse, only impaired consciousness, so the injury profile does not support a black tag.

Transport patients in the order they were tagged: Transporting strictly in tagging order assumes the tag still matches the patient's current status, but nothing in the treatment area confirms that, so a patient who has worsened since triage gets moved out of turn.

Move patients to the ambulances by tag color: Sorting patients to ambulances by tag color is a legitimate transport step once the category is confirmed, but doing it on arrival skips the reassessment the treatment area exists for.

Keep the categories assigned during initial triage: This looks efficient because it avoids redoing work already done at triage, but that first sort was a few seconds long on a patient whose condition keeps moving, so holding the same category without rechecking misses anyone who has since improved or decompensated, exactly the gap reassessment is meant to close.

Load the immediate patient into the ambulance: Loading the immediate patient into the ambulance answers a question that comes after triage is done, when transport priority gets assigned by tag. With three occupants still untriaged, the crew doesn't know if this patient is the one who needs that seat first, and pulling the only EMT off the sort to move one patient stops the count.

Transport the immediate patient to the hospital: Transporting the immediate patient is the correct move for that patient eventually, once transport is organized against a complete triage picture. Here the crew is the only unit on scene and three occupants haven't been assessed at all; leaving now abandons them undiagnosed with the next ambulance still ten minutes out.

Begin treating the immediate patient's breathing: Beginning treatment on the difficulty-breathing patient looks right because immediate patients do get quick life-saving interventions, like opening an airway, during the initial sort. Full treatment beyond that quick fix stops the sort cold, and with three occupants still untagged, the EMT has no way to know whether committing time here leaves a sicker patient undiscovered.

Green (minor injuries): Green fits a patient who can get up and walk to the triage area under their own power with only minor injuries. This patient cannot walk because of severe leg injuries, so the very first step of START sorts them out of the ambulatory group before any vital sign is even checked.

Yellow (delayed): Yellow looks tempting because everything past the respiratory rate fits delayed status: alert and oriented to person, place, and time, a strong radial pulse at 92, and warm, dry skin all point to adequate perfusion. But START checks respirations first, and 32 breaths per minute exceeds the 30 per minute cutoff, pulling this patient to Red before perfusion counts.

Black (expectant): Black is reserved for patients with no spontaneous respirations even after the airway is repositioned, or injuries clearly incompatible with survival. This patient is breathing spontaneously at 32 breaths per minute, so the absence of breathing that defines Black never applies here.

Red: all burn injuries require immediate assessment and transport: Deep partial thickness or full thickness burns, especially with airway involvement, do get triaged Red under START. This patient's burn is described as superficial, and the patient is walking and speaking normally, findings that override injury type in the ambulation test START runs first.

Yellow: all burn patients must be triaged as Yellow until vitals confirm stability: Yellow fits patients who cannot walk but show a respiratory rate and radial pulse present with an appropriate response to command, held pending further vitals. This patient already cleared the ambulation step by walking to the EMT, so vitals aren't the next move here; START assigns Green to walkers without waiting on numbers.

Black: any patient with a burn injury is classified as nonviable: Black marks patients who remain apneic even after airway repositioning, or who are otherwise unresponsive and nonviable. This patient is walking and speaking, clearly moving air and perfusing well enough to ambulate on command.

Triage the patients where they stand and tag them for later: Triage feels like the first thing that happens to any patient found at a mass-casualty incident. Triaging patients who are still wet with the chemical exposes the EMT, contaminates the tag, and defeats the zone control the hazmat team has already set up.

Triage the patients as minimal and send them for transport: Walking out of the plant makes these patients look like the walking wounded, so the minimal category seems automatic. Ambulatory status does not clear a patient for the transportation area, and moving contaminated patients toward the ambulances spreads the contamination into a clean area.

Walk the patients into the treatment area and triage them: This gets patients to care quickly, which is the right instinct on an ordinary call. It carries the chemical into the treatment area, and patients are decontaminated before they are taken to a treatment area, not after.

Tag the patient immediate and move to the next patient: A pulse is present, so the patient is alive and obviously critical, and immediate looks like the safe tag. In JumpSTART the immediate tag belongs to the child who starts breathing after the rescue breaths; the child who does not is expectant.

Give five more rescue breaths and reassess for breathing: Repeating the trial follows the reasoning behind the rescue-breath step and feels safer than stopping. The algorithm allows one trial of five breaths, and repeating it holds primary triage on a single patient while the rest of the scene goes unsorted.

Begin chest compressions and ventilations: Compressions treat cardiac arrest, and a distal pulse is palpable in this patient. Starting a full resuscitation during primary triage also commits the EMT to one patient while every other patient waits to be assessed.

Tag the patient immediate and move to the next patient: Burns look dramatic and the patient cannot walk. Immediate is reserved for airway or breathing compromise, uncontrolled bleeding, signs of shock, severe burns, or open chest or abdominal injury. A partial-thickness burn confined to one lower leg is not a severe burn by extent, and the question rules out each of the other immediate criteria.

Direct the patient to the collection area for minimal patients: The minimal category is for the walking wounded, and sending this patient to the collection area treats the burns as trivial. The patient did not walk to that area, so the first branch of the algorithm never places the patient there.

Give positive pressure ventilations and tag the patient immediate: This treats any burn from a structure fire as an inhalation injury. There is no soot around the mouth or nose, the voice is clear, and the breathing is unlabored, so the airway is not involved, and ventilating one patient stops primary triage for everyone else.

Stop and triage the patient before reporting to staging: A patient asking for help is right in front of you and carries no tag. Triage of that platform is already assigned, and a second crew working it unannounced leaves command with an inaccurate picture of who is doing what.

Load the patient and transport to the closest hospital: Transporting straight away feels like using the ambulance for what it is for. It removes a unit from the incident before command has counted it and commits that unit to a patient who has not been prioritized against the others.

Assess the patient and report the findings to command: Assessing and radioing the findings sounds like a compromise between helping and following the plan. It still begins patient care before check-in and adds radio traffic on a channel command needs for the triage report.

Wait for the second ambulance before transporting anyone: Waiting 12 minutes to move a deteriorating Red patient risks losing the patient; the on-scene ambulance should not sit idle when it can transport the highest-priority patient now.

Transport both Yellow patients together first, then return for Red: Yellow patients are not immediately life-threatened; transporting them ahead of a deteriorating Red patient reverses triage priority.

Have the Green patient ride along to help monitor the Red patient: A Green (minor) patient is not a substitute for trained personnel, and this does not address getting the Red patient moving.