BACKGROUND Telephone consultation and triage are used to limit the workload on emergency departments. Lack of visual cues and clinical tests put telephone consultations to a disadvantage compared to face-to-face consultations increasing the risk of under-triage. Under-triage occurs in telephone triage; however why under-triage happens is not explored yet. The aim of the study was to describe si...

STUDY OBJECTIVE The mass casualty triage system known as simple triage and rapid treatment (START) has been widely used in the United States since the 1980s. However, no outcomes assessment has been conducted after a disaster to determine whether assigned triage levels match patients' actual clinical status. Researchers hypothesize that START achieves at least 90% sensitivity and specificity fo...

BACKGROUND Telephone triage is an increasingly common means of handling requests for same-day appointments in general practice. AIM To determine whether telephone triage (GP-led or nurse-led) reduces clinician-patient contact time on the day of the request (the index day), compared with usual care. DESIGN AND SETTING A total of 42 practices in England recruited to the ESTEEM trial. METHOD...

OBJECTIVE To assess the performance of the newly implemented Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) triage system in a redesigned 200-bed community hospital emergency department (ED) and to evaluate the predictive validity of CTAS in this setting. METHODS Triage system performance was analyzed on the basis of 4 quality indicators: time to triage; triage duration; proport...

OBJECTIVE To determine the diagnostic and triage accuracy of online symptom checkers (tools that use computer algorithms to help patients with self diagnosis or self triage). DESIGN Audit study. SETTING Publicly available, free symptom checkers. PARTICIPANTS 23 symptom checkers that were in English and provided advice across a range of conditions. 45 standardized patient vignettes were co...

OBJECTIVE We evaluated the validity of the Canadian Paediatric Triage and Acuity Scale (PaedCTAS) for children visiting a pediatric emergency department (ED). METHODS This was a retrospective study evaluating all children who presented to a pediatric university-affiliated ED during a 1-year period. Data were retrieved from the ED database. Information regarding triage and disposition was regi...

BACKGROUND In a resource poor setting with poverty, a high burden of disease and critically low medical staff numbers, triage could potentially improve the long waiting times experienced at South African public hospital emergency departments (ED) and render timely emergency care to those in most need. AIM To evaluate the impact of introducing nurse triage (using the Cape Triage Score (CTS)) o...

Background: Evaluating and monitoring the performance of emergency departments (EDs) are steps in one of the most important processes to improving the efficiency of hospitals. Indicators such as patient wait time until being visited by a doctor, patient wait time from the order until admission, percentage of patients with a determined order, time of conversion of a patient’s co...

background and purpose: the emergency severity index (esi) triage system has been recommended by the ministry of health to classify patients at emergency departments. this study aimed to assess the validity of esi system (version 4) in the emergency department of a teaching hospital. outcome measures were hospitalization, emergency department (ed) length of stay, resource consumption, in-hospit...

INTRODUCTION Triage is an important aspect of the management of mass casualty incidents. This study describes the triage after the Turkish Airlines Crash near Amsterdam in 2009. The results of the triage and the injuries of P3 casualties were evaluated. In addition, the role of the trauma mechanism and its effect on spinal immobilisation during transport was analysed. METHODS Retrospective an...