The core Manchester Triage System reference, fully revised and updated

Emergency Triage, now in its Fourth Edition, is the core text for the Manchester Triage System (MTS), the most widely used triage system in the world. Written by members of the Manchester Triage Group, this edition delivers the latest protocols and prioritisation strategies for clinicians using face-to-face triage in urgent and emergency care.

Reading more like a manual than a reference, it uses case studies to set out how to use MTS in practice, alongside detailed advice on implementing and maintaining the system.

This edition introduces:

• A strict hierarchy of discriminators, reordering general and specific discriminators throughout the priority levels
• Revised flowcharts, including updated mental health charts and a diarrhoea and vomiting chart now split into separate adult and paediatric versions
• New evidence-based paediatric vital signs from a European multicentre study to strengthen the prioritisation of children
• Expanded background documenting the prequel and true origins of MTS
• A clear, logically sequenced overview that builds clinical decision-making step by step, supported by practical examples

Emergency Triage serves all providers in urgent and emergency care, including triage practitioners, emergency department staff, prehospital clinicians, and primary care clinicians. It functions both as a training tool for those learning the Manchester Triage System and as a daily clinical reference.

Jill Windle is a Triage Consultant Nurse with the Advanced Life Support Group and a retired Lecturer Practitioner in Emergency Nursing at Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Salford, combining frontline triage expertise with years of clinical teaching experience.

Kevin Mackway-Jones is a retired Consultant Emergency Physician from Manchester Royal Infirmary and Manchester Children’s Hospital, and Medical Director of the North West Ambulance Service, bringing decades of emergency medicine leadership to the development of the Manchester Triage System.

Stephanie Allmark is a Paramedic with the North West Ambulance Service and an Emergency Department nurse who leads Clinical Development for the Manchester Triage Group, contributing both prehospital and hospital-based clinical triage perspectives to this edition.

Janet Marsden is the late Professor of Ophthalmology and Emergency Care and former Director of the Centre for Effective Emergency Care at Manchester Metropolitan University, whose sustained research contributions advanced evidence-based emergency care practice and shaped clinical education across the discipline.