GlossaryEmergency management
Triage
Triage is the process of assessing and prioritizing patients according to urgency and the resources available in a particular care setting.
Triage is the process of assessing and prioritizing patients according to urgency and the resources available in a particular care setting. It helps determine the order of attention. A triage category is an assessment at a point in time; it is not a complete diagnosis or a guarantee of the patient's eventual outcome.
Reading a category
The World Health Organization's triage resources distinguish routine triage from mass-casualty triage. Systems can use different categories, colors, and criteria. A color should therefore be interpreted using the named protocol rather than a general internet color chart.
In public incident summaries, a reported category may describe initial assessment, later reassessment, or a summary of several patients. The timing and counting unit matter. A patient can be reassessed without becoming a new patient in a person-based total.
Example
Hypothetical example: An incident record initially places one patient in a lower-urgency category. A later assessment changes the category as the person's condition changes. Both entries remain in the care history.
The two categories describe successive assessments of one patient. They should not be counted as two people. The later assessment also does not, by itself, prove that the initial assessment was improper; that conclusion would require clinical review of the circumstances.
Common confusion
Dispatch priority ranks a reported request before or during response. Patient triage assesses patients in the relevant clinical setting. The two may inform one another but use different information and processes.
A diagnosis identifies a medical condition. A triage label prioritizes attention and cannot substitute for that diagnostic finding.
Scope and interpretation
Read the protocol, assessment time, category definitions, and whether the data describe people or assessment events. This page explains terminology rather than how to perform triage. Specific care decisions require authorized personnel and the applicable medical system.