Triage is deciding the level of priority for where medical resources should go at a particular time. It is especially considered during a battle or disaster situation, where the aim is to maximize the number of survivors in the long term.

In a normal hospital situation, you often have a triage nurse at the reception who is given the responsibility of deciding the importance of a case. Eg: if one patient comes in with a thorn in his finger, and another patient comes in later with a severe and bleeding head wound, then the triage nurse is obviously going to put the later patient higher up the list.