Conventional NATO Triage Classification:

T1: Immediate Surgery to safe life or limb. Minimal operating time. Expected good quality survival.

T2: Delayed. Time consuming surgery. Life not jeopardized by delay. Stabilization minimizes effects of delay.

T3: Minimal. Minor injuries. Managed by minimally trained staff.

T4: Expectant. Serious, multiple injuries. Treatment is complex and time consuming. Treatment consumes considerable personnel or resources.

Additional Triage Classifications:

Red/Emergent: Priority 1 Critically ill patient that may survive with intervention that does not consume significant resource and personnel.

Yellow/Urgent: Priority 2 Likely to survive and remain stable for several hours with stabilization.

Green/Nonurgent: Priority 3 Minor injuries that may be treated by those with minimal training and may wait until other injured patients are cared for.

Blue/Variable urgency: Priority 2 or 3 Patients with severe injuries not expected to survive unless time consuming care is almost immediate. These patients may take too many resources from more viable patients and may have to have low priority due to limitation of resources. This color is sometimes used in place of black because many providers have difficulty placing a patient into the category of palliative care only.

Black/Expectant: No obvious priority. Overwhelming injuries with little chance for survival or already dead. Only priority is comfort measures to those dying.

There are a multitude of triage scoring systems that attempt to help provide rescuers with a system of appropriate prioritization. There is probably no scoring system available that can replace a prehospital provider that has experience in triage. After the patient has received a triage classification, there must be some method of visibly marking the patient so that evacuation teams may transport patients our in the proper order. There are several commercial tag systems available. The basic idea is to use a system that has color codes visible, and allows some documentation of injury and treatment received. If possible there should be several copies so that one copy can be removed by the initial triage person and saved to keep track of total victims and to account for classifications later. Those victims not ambulatory have tags placed on right ankle and those ambulatory on the right wrist. Once the patient is removed from the field, the patient is assigned to the next treatment area by another medical triage team leader, and another copy of the triage tag is removed to provide a count of those removed from the field, type of injury, and treatment. This tag eventually should become part of the patient's record for later review.