Triage//
During wars and natural disasters, there are sometimes not enough doctors and equipment to treat everyone at once.// Doctors must decide quickly whom to treat first.// How do they make such decisions?//
　Dr. Kanto tells about making a painful decision to turn off a sick child’s oxygen.// The nurse could not do it at all, and for Dr. Kanto, it was very stressful.// However, Dr. Kanto was following the accepted medical practice of triage.//
　Triage is the process of determining whom to treat first.// The term comes from the French verb trier  meaning “to select.”//
　Triage was used first in World War I, when doctors had to treat large numbers of soldiers with limited supplies of medicine and equipment.// They had to make quick decisions about whom to treat first.//
　Triage is used today when there are too many victims to be treated all at once.// Victims are divided into four categories by using colored tags.//
　Category I (Red): Those who are likely to die if they are not treated immediately; they are treated first.//
　Category II (Yellow): Those who need hospital treatment but whose injuries are not life-threatening.//
　Category III (Green): Those with minor injuries.//
　Category 0 (Black): Those who are dead or so badly injured that they are unlikely to survive even if they are treated immediately.//
　Triage lets doctors save the greatest number of lives.// But it places life-and-death decisions in the hands of individual doctors and nurses who are committed to saving the life of every patient.// These decisions can be very stressful.// There is also the issue of responsibility.// Should individual doctors be held responsible if it later turns out that the decision was wrong?//
　Triage is an extreme measure that should rarely be used.// Every individual life is important; all suffering should be treated.// Society must prepare well in advance for possible disaster.// If triage must be used, we should pay deep respect to those who make these hard decisions.//