Triage allows the classification of patients according to the urgency of care.
Triage is a French term used in the field of medicine to classify patients according to the urgency of care. Also called triage , it is a method that allows people's care to be organized according to existing resources and the needs of the individuals .
Triage, in short, is a classification . Through this procedure, it is sought that patients who require immediate therapeutic attention due to the condition they present are treated first, privileging them over those who suffer from less serious disorders.
Importance of triage
There are people who, if they are not treated promptly, suffer complications that can even put their lives at risk. Triage gives these cases the highest priority. On the other hand, those who can wait without compromising their general condition are momentarily left in the background.
Typically, triage is applied when a health center has a massive demand for care due to a catastrophe or emergency . Suppose that a pileup occurs on a route (highway) and, from one moment to the next, twenty injured people arrive at a hospital. Faced with this situation, which forces human and material resources to be distributed precisely, professionals resort to triage and classify patients according to each one's severity.
Anyone who needs urgent medical attention is placed in level 1 or red triage.
Classification by levels
Hospitals generally rely on a common classification that distinguishes between five different levels of severity , which determine how long each patient can wait before being treated. Each one corresponds to a number and a color; Let's see a summary below:
* Level 1 (red) : the patient needs immediate attention, since his condition is truly critical;
* Level 2 (orange) : although a level 2 condition is also of considerable severity, it was determined that the person can wait up to 10 minutes before being seen by a doctor;
* Level 3 (yellow) : Level 3 cases are urgent and life-threatening, but patients can wait up to an hour to receive professional care;
* Level 4 (green) : the delay on the part of doctors can reach two hours;
* Level 5 (blue) : it is the least serious condition within this classification. The time limit that patients can remain on the waiting list is four hours.
Triage in war
This classification is also used on the battlefield, and to complete it it is necessary to add two colors, which can be found one at each end of the list: white , which represents the people who died in the catastrophe; black , to describe those patients whose chances of recovery are too low.
Some triages associate this last condition with agony . In any case, both white and black indicate that the health center will not allocate any resources to them, and that is why they are not usually part of the information posters that appear in emergency rooms .
Other uses of the concept
It should be noted that in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, the noun "triage" is not found, but we must consult the definition of "triage", and this refers us to the verb "triar", which we can define as follows: separate, choose or select; action of entering and leaving frequently in a strong hive with a large population (performed by bees); become transparent due to poor weaving or wear and tear (this happens to fabric).
In Argentina, for its part, it is said that milk "settles" when it is "cut", that is, when the serous part is separated from the buttery part, which results in a loss of incorporation and continuity.