Fair prioritization of casualties in disaster triage: a qualitative study

Disasters may result in mass casualties and an imbalance between health care demands and supplies. This imbalance necessitates the prioritization of the victims based on the severity of their condition. Contributing factors and their effect on decision-making is a challenging issue in disaster triage. The present study seeks to address criteria for ethical decision-making in the prioritization of patients in disaster triage.

This conventional content analysis study was conducted in 2017. Subjects were selected from among Iranian experts using purposeful and snowball sampling methods. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by the content analysis.

Efficient and effective triage and priority-oriented triage were the main categories. These categories summarized a number of medical and nonmedical factors that should be considered in the prioritization of the victims in disaster triage.

A combination of measures should be considered to maximize the benefits of the prioritization of causalities in disasters. None of these measures alone would suffice to explain all aspects of ethical decision-making in disaster triage. Further investigations are needed to elaborate on these criteria in decision-making.