During the last decade, the issue of pandemic triage has entered the discussion of triage [21-23]. The emerging infectious disease like Severe Acute Respiratory c-Met pathway Syndrome (SARS) and Pandemic Influenza have alerted emergency departments to the need for contingency plans. This applies to triage for intensive care services as well. In such public health emergencies, the managerial emphasis shifts from the individual to the population, from “individual” to “statistical” lives, trying Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical to realize a maximal outcome out of the available resources [24]. Nevertheless, emergency staff continues to be confronted, on a face-to-face

level, with the care for individual patients in need, whom they might not be able to help. Emergency Department Triage Triage is a system of clinical risk management employed in emergency departments worldwide to manage patient flow safely

when clinical needs exceed capacity. It promulgates a system Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical that delivers a teachable, auditable method of assigning clinical priority in emergency settings [17]. In contemporary emergency care, triage is regarded as an essential function not only during massive influx of patients as in disasters, epidemics and pandemics but also in regular emergency care departments. The burden in emergency care is increasing and so are the expectations of patients [1]. In hospitals that apply triage for regular emergency care, triage is the first point of contact with Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the ED. Assessment by the triage officers involves a combination of the chief complaint of the patient, general appearance and at times, recording of vital signs [25]. Guidelines for Emergency Department Triage Triage guidelines score emergency patients into several categories and relate it to the maximum Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical waiting time based on specific criteria of clinical urgency. Initial versions of triage guidelines had three levels of categorization mostly

termed as emergent, urgent and non-urgent [25]. Studies have revealed that five-level triage systems are more effective, valid and reliable [25,26]. In contemporary emergency care, most triage systems sort out patients into five categories or levels (Table ​(Table1)1) including Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the time within which the patient should be seen by the emergency care provider [27]. Table 1 Five-level Triage TCL Systems The most commonly used guidelines for ED triage on the international literature are The Manchester Triage Score [17,28,29], The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale [28-31], The Australasian Triage Scale [28,32] and Emergency severity Index [27,29]. In ESI, there are five-levels of these triage score (see Figure ​Figure1).1). In addition national and institutional guidelines are also developed and used in practice [15,33]. Figure 1 Emergency Severity Index (ESI) Triage Algorithm, v. 4 (Five Levels). When reflecting on the question whether these triage systems say anything about how to sort a patient among one of the five levels, we can apply The Manchester Triage Score [17] as an example.