Supervisors info:
Μυριανθεύς Παύλος, Καθηγητής, Νοσηλευτική, ΕΚΠΑ
Κατσούλας Θεόδωρος, Καθηγητής, Νοσηλευτική, ΕΚΠΑ
Μαριόλης- Σαψάκος Θεόδωρος, Αν. Καθηγητής, Νοσηλευτική, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Purpose: The nursing science has been developed a lot in recent years, with nurses taking on more and more responsibilities in the field of Health Sciences, such as triage. However, the effectiveness of nursing staff in the screening process is affected by a variety of factors, modifiable and non-modifiable. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the ability of nursing staff to triage correctly by investigating possible factors of ineffectiveness.
Method: A retrospective study took place at the Emergency Department of a private hospital as part of the Postgraduate Program of the Department of Nursing of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. It concerns the recording of 790 cases over the age of 18 who arrived at the ED in a period of 8 random days, as well as 12 individuals of the nursing staff who are under the responsibility of the Sorting of these incidents. The Nursing Staff was evaluated for correct triage, based on the level of education, the time experience in Sorting places, the knowledge about triage, especially for the referral of patients to the correct medical specialty, through a questionnaire, as well as the workload.
Results: Overall the nursing staff achieved right triage in 82.7% of the cases. Five of eight who completed the questionnaire (62.5%) had a moderate level of triage ability based on imaginary scenarios of patients’ referral to medical specialty. A statistically significant relationship was found between Knowledge for triage and Correctness of sorting (p=0.001). The Educational Level and Experience of the Nursing Staff in Sorting Areas, measured in years, had no statistically significant relationship with the Ability of correct triage (p=0.379) and (p=0.435) respectively. A correlation was also found between the Nursing Workload in terms of the number of patients and the Number of errors (r=0.808, p=0.001).
Conclusion: The findings in such a study help to derive a quantitative measure of the effectiveness of nursing staff in Triaging. At the same time, they contribute to finding possible causes of wrong triage and targeted solutions. We cannot assume that nursing experience and nursing education affect the correctness of Triaging. On the contrary, it seems that the level of personal knowledge is related to the correct triage. Moreover, the large number of patients in the ED, an indicator of nursing workload, showed a negative correlation with the correct triage. However, a multitude of studies must follow.
Keywords:
Effective triage, Nurse triage, Correct triage, Right triage, Emergency patients
