triage
/ˈtriːɑːʒ
/noun [mass noun]
1(In medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties: [as modifier]: a triage nurse...
- Do alternative methods exist for diagnosing heart failure or enabling appropriate triage of patients for echocardiography?
- On site management includes first aid, patient triage, and ambulance staging with a basic aim of maximal use of resources.
- However, when triage nurses became involved 80% of patients were treated correctly.
1.1The process of determining the most important people or things from amongst a large number that require attention: a system of educational triage that allows a few students to get help while the needs of others are neglected...
- Meanwhile, liberals are engaged in a constant process of triage, picking and choosing only the most important fights, and waiving the rest.
- Is the administration actually doing the environment a favor by performing budget triage, funneling the most money to the neediest sites?
- Nine measurement points were used after the introduction of triage to allow multiple cross sectional comparisons of data during the sequential inclusion of the sites into the study.
verb [with object]
Decide the order of treatment of (patients or casualties): victims were triaged by paramedics before being transported to hospitals...
- ‘Treatment with antidepressant, in a sense, triages patients with primary affective disorders to a different path’.
- Parlier, the most experienced, triaged the patients on the fantail in the order they needed to be evacuated - the most serious first - and passed them forward on the starboard side to Doc Moser.
- This anesthesia care provider would assist in triaging patients and coordinating the flow of patients throughout the perioperative area.
Origin
Early 18th century (in the sense 'the action of sorting items according to quality'): from French, from trier 'separate out'. The current sense dates from the 1930s, from the military system of assessing the wounded on the battlefield.
This is an English use of a French word, from trier ‘separate out’. The medical sense dates from the 1930s, from the military system of assessing the wounded on the battle field.