triages

Triage is the process of sorting and prioritizing patients, tasks, or resources to guide treatment or response when demand exceeds supply. In medical settings, triage aims to maximize outcomes by directing care toward those most likely to benefit, while providing basic support to others as needed. The concept derives from the French trier, to sort, and was popularized in battlefield medicine by Dominique Jean Larrey during the Napoleonic Wars.

In field triage, standardized algorithms classify patients by urgency. The START approach uses color-coded categories: immediate, delayed, minor, and expectant. In hospital settings, triage often uses systems such as the Emergency Severity Index (ESI), a five-level scale that blends acuity with anticipated resource needs. Triage is typically conducted by trained clinicians or rescue personnel and is dynamic; patients may be re-triaged as conditions change or resources become available.

Triage also applies beyond medicine. In information technology, incident triage prioritizes bug fixes or outages; in disaster management, it helps allocate responders and supplies. Ethical considerations center on fairness, transparency, and the tension between saving the most lives and attending to vulnerable individuals. Triage decisions may involve do-not-resuscitate orders, prognosis estimates, and public health considerations, and they are subject to review and oversight.

See also: mass casualty incident, emergency medicine, and software triage.