EMTmerkkejä

EMTmerkkejä refers to the specific signs, indicators, and annotations that emergency medical technicians (EMTs) observe and document during prehospital care. The term is commonly used in Finnish medical literature and training materials to denote both clinical signs on patients and symbolic notations on documentation sheets. EMTs rely on these cues to assess injury severity, predict physiological deterioration, and decide on transport priorities. Typical patient signs include abnormal breathing patterns, cyanosis, altered consciousness, and hemodynamic instability. EMTs are trained to identify and record these using a standardized assessment language, such as the ABCDE approach and tools like the Glasgow Coma Scale or the Shock Index. In addition to patient signs, EMTmerkkejä also covers markings on prehospital charts, such as color‑coded flags, location tags, and priority codes that guide both the EMT team and incoming hospital staff. The concept is integrated into electronic patient care reporting systems, where digital tick‑boxes or icons represent the presence of specific findings. By keeping consistent use of EMTmerkkejä, care coordination improves, and the accuracy of information transfer from the scene to the emergency department is enhanced.