Triage

Triage is the sorting of patients by the urgency of their medical needs. It directs limited staff and resources toward patients who need care soonest.

Emergency Severity Index: A five-level emergency department triage system that combines expected resource use with immediate danger. It shows how emergency departments rank patients using both acuity and likely resource needs.
Emergency department: A hospital unit that evaluates and treats patients with urgent or acute conditions. Most hospital triage systems first determine the order of assessment in this setting.
Dominique Jean Larrey: A French military surgeon who organized rapid battlefield treatment and evacuation during the Napoleonic Wars. His system prioritized treatment by injury and urgency rather than rank.
First-come, first-served: A service allocation rule that gives priority according to arrival order. Triage may place a later arrival first when their condition is more urgent.
Waiting time: The interval between requesting or arriving for care and receiving a service. Triage categories determine how long patients may safely wait before assessment or treatment.
START triage: A rapid disaster triage method that sorts casualties using breathing, circulation, and ability to follow commands. It provides a fast field algorithm for sorting many casualties at once.
Mass-casualty incident: An event in which the number or needs of casualties overwhelm available response resources. Triage shifts from individual prioritization to maximizing benefit across a casualty surge.
Napoleonic Wars: A series of European conflicts from 1803 to 1815 involving Napoleonic France and shifting coalitions. The wars provided the battlefield setting in which Larrey organized early systematic triage.
Medical futility: A judgment that a medical intervention cannot achieve its intended physiological or clinical goal. It is distinct from triage, which ranks urgency rather than judging whether care can work.
Undertriage: The assignment of a lower urgency level than a patient's condition warrants. It can delay time-sensitive treatment when signs of serious illness are missed.

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