Triage Nurse

"Triage" is a medical practice that is applied when there are not enough resources, and you want to maximize results.

Basically, patients are divided in three (hence Tri-age) categories:

those who will die, even if attended
those who will get better (or at least survive until more resources are available), even if left unattended
those who will die if unattended, but would survive if attended.

Medical resources are first applied to patients in the third category, thus providing the maximum possible number of survivors.

Note 1, for statistically-oriented people: All sentences above should rather read "who will *most probably* ..." because Medicine isn't an exact science, no matter what doctors would want us to believe ;)

Note 2, for math-minded people: there should be a fourth category up there: those who will survive *unless* treated, but somehow doctors are always insisting that this is an empty set... :D

This term is used in many different contexts. The original use comes from battlefield medicine, where letting the doomed die is considered an acceptable practice. Modern hospital emergency rooms have "triage nurses", but the first category doesn't exist in a modern hospital setting. The only way a seriously injured patient will be denied care is if he/she is already dead; even if someone is wheeled into the ER in terrible shape, hospital staff will almost always attempt to save them.

Seriously injured patients are routinely denied care in my area (Houston, Texas) if they don't have medical insurance. Ambulances carrying them aren't allowed to take them to some hospitals.

In Oregon, at least.... hospitals with emergency facilities are required to provide care to injured patients, regardless of ability to pay. Likewise, hospitals with maternity wards are required to provide childbirth care to laboring mothers.

One prominent local hospital chain was recently denied a zoning change to build a new hospital in a Portland suburb. Guess what two functions the proposed hospital did not have?

At any rate, health care in the US has lots of problems. Don't know what the answer is; but I suspect that it is a) likely to be complicated, and b) not likely to make ANYONE in the health care industry happy.