Disaster Medical Operations & START Triage

In mass casualty incidents, there are more victims than responders can treat simultaneously. Triage — from the French 'trier,' meaning to sort — is the systematic process of categorizing patients by urgency so that limited resources save the most lives. This requires a profound mental shift: in normal medicine, the sickest patient gets attention first. In disaster medicine, treating one critical patient for 30 minutes while 10 others with treatable injuries deteriorate and die is unacceptable. Triage maximizes survival across the entire patient population by directing resources where they will do the most good. It is psychologically difficult but medically essential.