For educators
Running a session
Everything you need to run TRIAGED with your own students.
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Time
About two hours
Building the case, the referral, and time to bring everyone back together.
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Groups
Small teams
Each team builds one person, then hands them to another team.
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You need
Dice, a shared space, evidence
Physical dice or the online version, a shared space such as Padlet to record thinking, and access to evidence resources.
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Student preparation
None
Students bring the learning and practice experience they already have.
Nothing for students to prepare in advance
Students do not need to learn a fictional patient in advance. TRIAGED is designed to make them use learning they already have.
- Choose a version that fits your group: Original, Trauma or PDT training.
- Set up a shared documentation space for each team, with one section per die, so the thinking behind each roll is recorded in order. See the worked example.
- Decide which team refers to which before you start, so the handover runs smoothly.
- Have evidence resources to hand, so teams can research uncertainties as they arise rather than guessing.
- Brief the group on the content. The dice include self-harm, suicide, abuse and violence. Say so before the first roll, not after.
- Agree how someone can step out without having to explain, and say who is available afterwards.
Seven stages, three phases
Each team builds a person, then passes them on. The first three stages repeat for every die; the rest happen once. Timings are suggestions for a two-hour session.
Build the case, in teams
About 50 minutes-
Build the person
One prompt at a time.
The team rolls one die, then decides together what the result means for their person, drawing on university learning and practice experience. The dice give the prompt; the students supply the clinical detail.
Ask the team- How might this present in practice? What does this mean for your person, given what you already know?
- What could this mean for your person, given what you already know?
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Capture the thinking
Record the detail and the risk formulation before the next roll.
Before rolling again, the team writes down the detail they have authored and their current risk formulation, with their rationale. This record becomes the referral another team will work from, so it needs to stand on its own.
Ask the team- What is your risk assessment right now, before the next die?
- Could another team understand your reasoning from what you have written?
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Keep destabilising it
New information may reinforce earlier thinking, or force the group to reconsider it.
Each new roll changes the picture. Encourage teams to revisit earlier judgements rather than defend them, and to research anything they are unsure of as they go.
Ask the team↻ Repeat stages 1 to 3 for every die- What changed when that die landed? What did not change in your assessment?
- Which factor are you weighting most heavily now, and can you defend it?
Hand over, and respond
About 30 minutes-
Refer the completed case
Another team receives the documentation.
Teams swap. The receiving team gets the documentation and nothing else, as they would with a real referral. Gaps in the record become part of the learning.
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Act on someone else’s assessment
Develop and justify interventions using appropriate evidence.
The receiving team interprets the referral, identifies priorities, and plans evidence-informed interventions for a person they did not create.
Ask the team- What would you do first, and why that first?
- What is the evidence for this intervention, for this person?
- What would you want to ask the referring team?
Bring the room together
About 30 minutes-
Bring everyone back together
Compare cases, reasoning, and what changed as information emerged.
Teams present the person they built and the interventions they planned for the case they received. Draw out the differences between groups and the reasoning behind their risk decisions.
Ask the room- Where did two teams weigh the same factor differently, and why?
- Which roll changed your thinking most?
- Did the receiving team read something in your referral that you hadn't intended?
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Close the fictional patients down
Then move into the emotional-safety debrief.
Say plainly that every person built today was assembled by chance and does not exist. Students can carry a generated patient out of the room with them, particularly when a roll lands close to their own experience or to someone they have cared for.
Separate what the session taught from how it felt. Give people a route to follow up privately if something landed hard, and say who is available, inside and outside the university.
What TRIAGED is not
The dice are not a risk assessment tool, and no combination of faces produces a risk score. Weighting is exactly what is under discussion: the activity works because the students do the weighting, not the dice.
Each version has its own citation. If you adapt the dice for your own field, please cite the version you adapted from.