Patients are also triaged based on potential or emergent illness. A simple example would be a 60 year old bloke comes to emergency complaining of chest pain. He has an extensive cardiac history. A 25 year old bloke comes to triage complaining of chest pain, he suffers no co-morbidities and has no cardiac history. He has had a nasty cold for the past week. The 60 year old will be seen before the 25 year old because there is greater potential that his chest pain is cardiac in nature.

Pain is subjective. Although the patient who presents with say, an isolated sprain or even a simple fracture of the ankle from playing footy will wish to be seen quickly, the fact is that he is not going to die from his injury and it does not have great potential to deteriorate. The laughing 60 year old with chest pain and a cardiac history will be see before the groaning ankle injury. Which is not to say that treating pain is not important, but it is less important than treating a patient suffering a life threatening injury or illness.

Basically, triage is a system which sorts patients in order from those who are actually sickest, those have the potential to become the sickest and those who need to be seen but are not time critical. (And then there are those who should have seen the local GP!) If the triage nurse is on the ball, and usually a triage nurse is highly experienced, it is a really good system. It is frustrating to have to wait if you present with a low acuity injury or illness but if you were seriously ill I'm sure you would be relieved to 'jump ahead' of all the less sick or injured patients.