|
Joseph F. Boggs, Ohio State University Extension, Hamilton County/Southwest District; James A. Chatfield, Erik A. Draper, |
Triage
Medical Triage (pronounced: tre-azh') was developed in the early 1800s by the French as a method to sort and prioritize the care of injured soldiers. The name is derived from the French "trier" meaning "to sort." Treating battlefield casualties on a first-come, first-served basis sometimes left the most seriously injured to die without medical care while the least injured received misplaced critical attention. The French demonstrated that by focusing limited medical resources using Triage, overall mortality rates could be substantially reduced. Triage has been adopted by the emergency medicine community throughout the world.
There are several medical Triage systems, but the simplest rely on sorting patients into three categories.
Obviously, by using Triage, the greatest concentration of resources is properly expended on Category 3 patients.
Treeage
Triage focuses critical resources using a defined decision-making process. We believe this same process can benefit landscape managers. However, when directed toward plant problems, Triage becomes Treeage (also pronounced: tree-azh'.)
Treeage uses the same sorting categories as medical Triage, except "thrive" is added to "survive" in the predicted outcomes to reflect the need to practice plant health care. Each plant problem is examined, evaluated, and placed into one of three categories.