BACKGROUND Emergency department (ED) triage is performed to prioritize care for patients with critical and time-sensitive illness. Triage errors create opportunity for increased morbidity and mortality. Here, we sought to measure the frequency of under- and over-triage of patients by nurses using the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) in Brazil and to identify factors independently associated with ...

Busy hospital emergency rooms are concerned with shortening the waiting times of patients, with relieving overburdened physicians, and with reducing the number of mistakes made by triage nurses. Here we propose a software agent, dubbed TIA (Triage Information Agent) that, via dialogue in English, would gather both logistical and medical information from a patient for later use by the triage nur...

Nurses in a hematology/oncology practice are responsible for the triage and management of phone calls from a diverse oncology population. An initiative was developed at the authors' institution to identify the educational needs of RNs while designing strategies to educate and improve telephone triage skills. The goal was to standardize triage practice and ultimately improve the effectiveness of...

The study of disaster triage is made difficult by the complex emotional response of potentially lifesaving intervention that a triage officer must make basing decisions on a succinct and efficient algorithm. A survey of triage professionals in international settings was designed to identify possible emotionally led bias that affects objective decision making in identifying victims most likely t...

Conservation efforts and emergency medicine face comparable problems: how to use scarce resources wisely to conserve valuable assets. In both fields, the process of prioritising actions is known as triage. Although often used implicitly by conservation managers, scientists and policymakers, triage has been misinterpreted as the process of simply deciding which assets (e.g. species, habitats) wi...

Based on background information in this special issue of the journal, possible triage recommendations for the first 4 days following a nuclear detonation, when response resources will be limited, are provided. The series includes: modeling for physical infrastructure damage; severity and number of injuries; expected outcome of triage to immediate, delayed, or expectant management; resources req...

BACKGROUND To examine nurse-physician inter-observer agreement on triage categorization and analyze their differences for future reference. METHODS A retrospective observational study was performed. Patients entering a 3500-bed medical center emergency department (ED) from July 1 to 31, 1998 were randomly selected. We compared triage assignments made by nurses and 2 ED physicians, and examine...

AIMS To describe the validation and reliability of a new pain tool (the Alder Hey Triage Pain Score, AHTPS) for children at triage in the accident and emergency (A&E) setting. METHODS A new behavioural observational pain tool was developed because of dissatisfaction with available tools and a lack of confidence in self-assessment scores at triage. The study was conducted in a large paediatric...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE This administrative case report documents the development of a mechanism by which systematic triage was used to assign patients to therapists in acute care settings. The primary objective was to develop a triage tool to improve patient access to medically necessary therapy services. CASE DESCRIPTION A unique triage tool and a decision tree were developed to determine wh...