Can someone explain how triage in emergency works?

[Me+him+bub]

I found this quite interesting. When I was 30 weeks pg with DD I experienced leg pain/tingling for several hours, and since I have a blood clotting disorder, went to ER - thought it may have been a blood clot or dvt etc. Waited over 2 hrs to be seen, and one of the many people who went in before me had "something in his eye" that had "been there for a day or two".
At the time I was pretty unimpressed!!
My issue ended up being nerve tingling from DD's position (even though she had moved around it didn't go away for a while) so all ended well for me, luckily

I have worked in ED at the Gold Coast of all places! and I as a nurse there was even upset about these situations, I am not justifying it but behind the scenes there are certain beds for certain categories of illness/injury, these areas are equipped with staff who can handle more needy scenarios and better machinery, closer to resus bay, theatre, etc, it may have been that the next bed free was in a basic area where there is just a bed and one nurse looking after 5 patients as opposed to where you should/would/could have been with dr's near by, more highly trained staff, etc. There is a system that works behind the scenes. one area in my old ED we called "cubes" was a few private type rooms where only women with miscarriages, sexual assault victims etc would go as opposed to being stared at by 6 other patients. And one nurse would have this to her self, another area was bay 1-5 where it was closest to ambulance bay and resus and would hold the sickest/worse off patients stroke/giving birth/physical assault etc, I could go on forever! the point being there is a lot that is unseen and if it didnt work this way there would be so much chaos for staff and patient's and life saving machinery would be all over the department and hard to get a hold of when needed. I have been on the other side waiting for hours with pregnancy bleeding and gall stones and few other things and boy it sucks waiting! the problem is if there was more staff and a few more beds then waiting times would be less.

[Butterfly Dawn]

Tairae- thats a good start.
ED here saved my hubbys life when he had mengitis. We had seen drs every day for a week and alll said he was fine, the day before the dr put him in outpatient iv and just gave him some meds. The morning he couldnt get off the floor, we got an ambulance(not like our 1s just a van to get you to hospital) and the ED shunted him round departments and eventually he got lucky and came acroos a dr who knew what was wrong- the point being- they keep on trying and that saved his life.
Here, they see some pretty bad stuff that could be prevented too. awsome job folks