triage

1. (in medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.

   a triage nurse

1. decide the order of treatment of (patients or casualties).

   victims were triaged by paramedics before being transported to hospitals

early 18th century (in the sense ‘the action of sorting items according to quality’): from French, from trier ‘separate out’. The current sense dates from the 1930s, from the military system of assessing the wounded on the battlefield.