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Triage is used in medical emergencies to sort injured patients and determine who requires immediate attention, who can wait, and who cannot be helped. It allows healthcare providers to efficiently allocate limited resources and save the greatest number of patients. Ethically challenging, triage also involves referring patients to other physicians to reduce strain on emergency medical units.
Triage is used in medical emergencies, as a way of sorting the injured so that the greatest number of patients can be helped. In medical emergency situations where there are more injured people than there are medical resources to care for them, triage allows doctors or other health care professionals to decide which people can be helped the most and how to help them efficiently.
Primarily used for battlefield medicine or during emergency situations, triage allows healthcare providers to determine which patients require immediate attention to survive, which patients are able to wait, and which patients cannot be helped with limited resources available. Emergency Departments also triage patients.
On-scene medical personnel performing triage move as quickly as possible from patient to patient assessing their situation. Patients with non-life-threatening injuries are marked as low priority. Things like broken bones or minor injuries can fall into this category. Often, lightly injured patients, sometimes referred to as the “walking wounded,” can help each other with basic first aid and in moving to safety in a dangerous environment such as an accident scene.
Patients who will not survive without immediate medical attention and are very likely to survive with help are given a high priority. Severe bleeding from wounds, amputations, or internal injuries would fall into this category. Basic emergency room isn’t enough to save these patients, but basic surgery will give them a high chance of survival.
Ethically and emotionally, the most difficult aspect of triage is designating some patients as requiring too much attention or as unlikely to survive even with extreme medical care. However, the triage professional must make this difficult choice, because the same four surgeons who would need 10 hours to try to save a severe burn victim, just to give him a small chance of survival, may be able to save dozens of injured less serious patients and give each of them a good chance of recovery.
An additional aspect of triage is to reduce the strain on nearby emergency medical units and trauma units by referring lightly injured and critically injured but stable patients to other physicians who are better able to handle the load. Instructing lightly injured patients to see their primary care physician or sending severely injured but stable patients to hospitals further afield are good examples.
As a method of making the most of limited medical resources, triage is a necessary tool for healthcare professionals facing an emergency situation.
