Bioethical Implications in Triage
Bioethical concerns have historically played an important role in triage decisions, such as the allocation of iron lungs during the polio epidemics of the 1940s and of dialysis machines during the 1960s. As many health care systems in the developed world continue to plan for an expected influenza pandemic, bioethical issues regarding the triage of patients and the rationing of care continue to evolve. Similar issues may occur for paramedics in the field in the earliest stages of mass casualty incidents when large numbers of potentially serious or critical patients may be combined with extremely limited staffing and treatment resources.
Research continues into alternative care, and various centers propose medical decision-support models for such situations. Some of these models are purely ethical in origin, while others attempt to use other forms of clinical classification of patient condition as a method of standardized triage.
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