Abstract

As the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical community faces the ongoing possibility of having to make difficult decisions regarding how to allocate scarce resources. Many groups have already developed triage frameworks to help guide healthcare teams in making these decisions. Those using and refining such algorithms can benefit from lessons learned in the long history of battlefield triage. This essay explores the ethical principles and priorities that guide decision-making during battlefield triage and compares them with those utilized during public health crises. We examine specific aspects of battlefield triage that can be translated to civilian public health crises, with recommendations on how to utilize them in these settings. Our hope is that health leaders during the current pandemic may draw upon important lessons learned over hundreds of years of battlefield triage when determining an ethical approach to managing scarce resources.