Final answer:
Triage is the process of assigning urgency to patients based on the severity of their conditions, particularly in situations where resources are limited.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term you are looking for is triaging, which is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This is often used in emergency and battlefield medicine, where resources are limited and not all patients can be treated at once. In the scenario you described, with the hospital's male staff heavily impacted, the quick action of the nurses and off-duty sisters to prepare the operating room depicts an urgent response to a chaotic situation, necessitating a triage system to manage the crisis effectively. The goal of triaging is to ensure that patients who are in the most critical need of medical attention receive it the fastest.