China is the largest developing country in the world. Although most emergency rooms in the mainland do not have an emergency triage system, large urban hospitals are beginning to set them up. However, there has been no media coverage in Beijing to promote public understanding of the emergency triage system. We performed a study to understand patients’ attitudes to the triage system, and to compare the patients’ expected waiting times with emergency room-allocated waiting times between different triage levels.

The study setting is a …