Performance of the rapid triage conducted by nurses at the emergency entrance

Abstract

Objective: to compare the performance of the rapid triage conducted by nurses at the emergency entrance and of the Manchester Triage System (MTS) in identifying the priority level of care for patients with spontaneous demand and predicting variables related to hospitalization. Method: a cross-sectional study carried out in an Emergency Department (ED) of a university hospital in São Paulo. The priority levels established in the rapid triage performed by nurses were high priority (patients of spontaneous demand directed to the emergency room) or low priority (those referred to the institution’s usual flow). Diagnostic accuracy measures were calculated to assess the performance of the indexes. Results: of the 173 patients (52.0% female, with mean age of 60.4 ± 21.2 years old) evaluated, it was observed that rapid triage was more inclusive for high priority and had better sensitivity and worse specificity than the MTS. The probability of non-severe patients being admitted to the emergency observation unit was lower due to the rapid triage. For the prediction of the other variables, the systems presented unsatisfactory results. Conclusion: the nurses overestimated the classification of patients as high priority, and rapid triage performed better than MTS in predicting admission to the emergency observation unit.

Characteristics of eye-related emergency visits and triage differences by nurses and ophthalmologists: Perspective from a single eye center in southern China

“…Previous studies on EDs in general hospitals revealed that there was poor agreement in triage between nurses and physicians, and nurses had a tendency to assign patients higher triage grades than physicians ( 10 , 11 ), yet there was reasonably substantial agreement between the two groups in our records. There were two explanations for the distinction.…”

“…Historically, registered nurses have been the first line to perform triage in many countries’ EDs ( 6 ). Previous studies have found that nurses in general EDs tend to assign patients to more urgent categories to avoid missing critical patients ( 10 , 11 ). However, there are currently little data in the literature on nurses’ prioritization preference for ophthalmic emergencies.…”

Rapid triage performed by nurses: Signs and symptoms associated with identifying critically ill patients in the emergency department

“…Based on rapid screening models commonly used in the prehospital setting, for example, the triage sieve, where the primary assessment identifies the victim's ability to walk, breathing and pulse (Smith, 2012), the ‘quick look nurse’ (Lauks et al, 2016), and in the effect of direct communication between triage nurse and emergency physician on reducing patient door‐to‐doctor and initial assessment time (Rahmatullah et al, 2017), this study's object will call the nurse's rapid assessment ‘rapid triage’. In other terms, rapid triage is a quick look from the nurse of an emergency patient's presentations when arriving at an emergency department (ED) with severe complaints reported by themselves or their companions (Moura & Nogueira, 2020).…”