Medical maximization: The effect of personality on triage decision-making

Laurence Alison, Neil Shortland, Cicely Herrod-Taylor, Catherine Stevens and Paul Christiansen

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 352, issue C

Abstract: Mass Casualty Incidents (MCIs) rapidly overwhelm the ability of local medical resources to deliver comprehensive and definitive medical care and they have been occurring more frequently in recent decades and affect countries of all socioeconomic backgrounds (Hart et al., 2018). As such, it is important to understand how individuals make such decisions in these events and what factors can hinder or help the process. In this study we focused on the critical role of maximization within MCI triage. Triaging an MCI requires juggling the demand and supply of resources, time, and focus, likely leading to various decisions involving compromise/sacrifice. In a vignette study, hosted on Amazon Mturk (n = 235, Mean age = 38.05, 51.49% self-identified as male), which involved triaging over 100 patients we found that trait differences maximization impacted the willingness to use a “black tag”. Furthermore, maximization also impacted how much information an individual needed about the patient before being willing to use a black tag. Overall, this research demonstrates the importance of understanding factors that create individual differences in how people make decisions during MCI events, especially those decisions that involve the use of potentially lifesaving treatments.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624004507
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:352:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624004507

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117006

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).