Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2025

Using Visual and Narrative Methods to Achieve Fair Process in Clinical Care
Published on: February 16, 2011
Is It Possible to Allocate Life? Triage, Ageism, and Narrative Identity
1History of Medicine and Ethics Department, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul Medeniyet University Medicine, Istanbul, Türkiye.
Abstract:
Triage protocols can exclude older patients for the sake of effectiveness and this may be defended as the older have already had their fair share of life, which can mean fair amounts or complete lives. Nevertheless, if life is considered as a narrative, mentioning amounts might be nonsensical. Narratives have a quality of unity; so, life events are fragments whose meanings are dependent on the meaning of the whole. Thus, time units do not represent a reliable measure of the content of life. In addition, people's experience is different from the external flow of time, making its significance relative. Moreover, to compare the completeness of lives qualitatively, it is necessary to have a common cultural understanding, which is improbable to agree on in a modern society. Therefore, basic assumptions of the accounts that refer to fair shares of lives are mistaken, and these accounts do not support age-based rationing.
Related Concept Videos
Ethical Issues
Ethical Concerns in Healthcare:
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Ethics and Bioethics
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
Ethnic Identity within a Larger Culture
Marcia's Theory of Identity Status

