What are the examples of priority in nursing?

September 23, 2025 •

5 min read

According to nursing experts, effective patient prioritization is a fundamental clinical skill that can dramatically impact outcomes. Knowing what are the examples of priority in nursing is essential for making swift, life-saving decisions and managing a busy workload effectively.

Quick Summary

Nurses prioritize patient needs by using established frameworks like the ABCs (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), Maslow's Hierarchy, and assessing acuity to address the most immediate and life-threatening issues first.

Key Points

ABCDE is for Emergencies: The Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, and Exposure framework is the first priority for life-threatening emergencies.
Maslow's Hierarchy Guides Holistic Care: This model helps nurses prioritize needs from physiological basics (ABCs, food, water) to higher-level concerns like safety, belonging, and esteem.
Acute Problems Take Precedence: Always prioritize new, sudden, or acute issues over chronic or long-standing conditions when determining urgency.
Unstable Patients are the Highest Priority: Focus on unstable or rapidly deteriorating patients first, as their condition could worsen quickly without intervention.
Safety is a Constant Priority: Patient safety, including preventing falls, medication errors, and infections, remains a top consideration after immediate physiological needs are addressed.
Ethical Principles Guide Decisions: Ethical concepts like autonomy and beneficence inform how nurses navigate complex decisions, balancing clinical judgment with patient wishes.

Core Frameworks for Prioritization

Nurses rely on a variety of systematic frameworks to guide their decisions, ensuring patient care is structured and effective. These frameworks provide a mental shortcut to help clinicians quickly identify the most urgent and life-threatening issues in a complex, fast-paced environment.

The ABCDE Framework

The ABCDE framework is one of the most fundamental tools in acute care and emergency nursing. It prioritizes the most immediate physiological threats to a patient's life.

A - Airway: The very first priority is to ensure the patient has a patent and clear airway. Examples include: clearing a patient's mouth of secretions, repositioning the head, or performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking patient.
B - Breathing: After the airway is secured, the nurse assesses the quality of the patient's breathing. Examples include: administering oxygen to a patient with low saturation, assisting ventilation, or assessing for conditions like a collapsed lung or asthma exacerbation.
C - Circulation: This step involves assessing the patient's heart rate, blood pressure, and overall perfusion. Examples include: applying pressure to a bleeding wound, starting intravenous fluids for a hypotensive patient, or managing a patient with an arrhythmia.
D - Disability: This part of the assessment involves a quick neurological evaluation. An example is assessing a patient's level of consciousness using the AVPU scale (Alert, Verbal, Pain, Unresponsive).
E - Exposure: The final step is to expose the patient to perform a full assessment, while maintaining dignity and warmth. An example is removing a trauma patient's clothing to check for hidden injuries or bleeds.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Beyond immediate physiological needs, Maslow's Hierarchy helps prioritize care based on a pyramid of human needs, from most basic to most complex.

Physiological: This is the base of the pyramid and includes the ABCs, along with needs like food, water, and sleep. An example is ensuring a diabetic patient receives their insulin before addressing a less urgent need.
Safety and Security: Once physiological needs are met, the next priority is ensuring patient safety. Examples include: fall precautions for an elderly patient, medication administration safety checks, or infection control measures like proper hand hygiene.
Love and Belonging: These are social and emotional needs. A nursing example is coordinating a visit with family members or ensuring a patient feels supported and not isolated.
Self-Esteem: A patient's sense of accomplishment and dignity is important for recovery. An example is encouraging a patient to participate in their own care, such as self-administering medication.
Self-Actualization: The highest level of the pyramid, focusing on personal growth. In nursing, this might involve helping a patient find purpose despite a chronic illness.

Practical Examples in a Clinical Setting

Here are some real-world examples that illustrate how nurses apply these prioritization principles.

Scenario: Multiple Alarms: A nurse has three patients whose alarms are sounding simultaneously. The patient with a heart monitor alarming for a life-threatening arrhythmia (Circulation) takes priority over the patient with a bed alarm (Safety), which takes priority over the patient who pressed the call bell for a pillow (Comfort).
Scenario: Acute vs. Chronic: A patient with chronic back pain (routine) and a patient with new, acute chest pain (critical) arrive at the ER at the same time. The patient with acute chest pain is prioritized because their condition is unstable and potentially life-threatening.
Scenario: Delegation: A charge nurse on a medical-surgical floor needs to prioritize tasks for the shift. The charge nurse assigns medication administration and patient assessments to RNs while delegating routine tasks like restocking supplies or ambulating a stable patient to unlicensed assistive personnel.

Comparison of Prioritization Frameworks


Feature	ABCDE	Maslow's Hierarchy	Acute vs. Chronic	CURE Mnemonic
Focus	Emergent physiological threat	Hierarchical human needs	Urgency based on onset	Categorical urgency
Best Use	Trauma, rapid deterioration, emergencies	Holistic care planning, stable patients	Differentiating patient needs	General task organization
Example	Patient with anaphylaxis (Airway)	Fall prevention for elderly (Safety)	New chest pain vs. chronic back pain	Administering STAT med (Critical)
Key Principle	Life over limb	Lower-level needs first	Unstable conditions first	Most critical first

Ethical Considerations in Prioritization

Prioritization in nursing is not just about clinical acuity; it also involves ethical decision-making. Nurses must navigate situations involving patient autonomy, beneficence, and justice.

Autonomy: Respecting a patient's right to make their own decisions about their care, even if the nurse disagrees. This could involve a patient refusing treatment despite the nurse's recommendation.
Beneficence: The duty to do good and act in the best interest of the patient. Nurses must weigh the benefits and burdens of interventions to ensure they are helping, not harming.
Justice: Ensuring that all patients receive fair and equitable treatment, regardless of their background or socioeconomic status. An example is treating two patients in the ED with the same level of care, despite one having private insurance and the other being unhoused.
Confidentiality: A nurse's duty to protect patient privacy and confidential information, as reinforced by laws like HIPAA.

For more detailed information on ethical principles in nursing, the American Nurses Association (ANA) offers extensive resources. The ANA's Code of Ethics provides non-negotiable ethical standards that are deeply embedded in nursing practice.

Using Acuity and Stability for Decision-Making

Beyond the established frameworks, nurses also use clinical judgment based on a patient's overall acuity and stability. Acuity refers to the severity of a patient's condition, while stability indicates whether their condition is likely to change unexpectedly.

Stable vs. Unstable: An unstable patient is always the highest priority. Examples of unstable patients include those with significant changes in vital signs, signs of active bleeding, or a new onset of altered mental status.
Expected vs. Unexpected: Unexpected findings often require immediate action. For example, an elevated temperature in a postoperative patient is expected, but an elevated temperature in a long-term care resident with osteoarthritis could be an unexpected sign of infection and requires immediate assessment.
Actual vs. Potential: An actual problem takes precedence over a potential problem. A patient who is actively bleeding has an actual problem, while a patient at risk for a fall has a potential problem.

Conclusion

Nursing prioritization is a dynamic process that requires nurses to synthesize information using proven frameworks like ABCDE, Maslow's Hierarchy, and other critical thinking principles. These examples demonstrate that effective prioritization isn't just about managing tasks; it is about applying clinical judgment, ethical principles, and acute assessment skills to ensure the safety and well-being of every patient. By mastering these core concepts, nurses can provide high-quality, patient-centered care even in the most challenging situations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nurses use priority frameworks to triage patients. They first address life-threatening issues (e.g., airway blockage), then urgent but stable issues (e.g., pain management), and finally, routine tasks (e.g., patient education). They also consider acuity, stability, and the patient’s specific needs.

The ABCs stand for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. It is a critical assessment tool where the nurse addresses problems in that specific order. For example, securing a patient's airway is the top priority, followed by ensuring they are breathing adequately, and then checking their circulation.

Maslow's is particularly useful when assessing a patient's overall needs and developing a comprehensive care plan, especially after immediate physiological threats have been stabilized. It reminds nurses to address basic survival needs before focusing on emotional or developmental needs.

This principle means that a new or sudden problem (acute) typically takes precedence over a long-standing, stable condition (chronic). For example, a patient experiencing new-onset chest pain is a higher priority than a patient with well-managed chronic back pain.

Patient safety priorities include implementing fall prevention strategies, ensuring correct medication administration (checking the 'five rights'), following proper infection control procedures like hand washing, and verifying patient identification before procedures.

Nurses prioritize unstable patients (e.g., rapidly dropping vital signs, new altered mental status) because their condition is likely to deteriorate quickly. Stable patients have predictable conditions and are not at immediate risk of a critical change, allowing the nurse to address them later.

An ethical priority is balancing a patient's autonomy with the principle of beneficence. For example, if a patient with the capacity to make decisions refuses a life-saving treatment, the nurse's priority is to respect that patient's informed choice while ensuring they have all the necessary information.