AMSN Community Practice Test

Triage is the process used to prioritize treatment when resources are overwhelmed in a disaster. It evaluates urgency, likelihood of benefiting from care, and the resources required, with the goal of saving the greatest number of lives possible under constrained conditions. This means those who can benefit most from immediate treatment and for whom survival is more likely are attended to first, while others may receive delayed care or be managed with palliative measures as appropriate.

Evacuation focuses on moving people to safety, risk communication is about sharing information with the public and stakeholders, and mass casualty management covers the broader coordination and logistics of handling many casualties. Triage is specifically the mechanism that determines the order in which patients receive care when the system cannot treat everyone at once.