Concordance of triage performed with emergency severity index in the emergency departments of Rasoul Akram and Haft Tir hospitals

• Main Authors: Nader Tavakoli, Saeed Abbasi, Afrooz Tayebi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Society of Diabetic Nephropathy Prevention 2020-01-01
• Series: Journal of Preventive Epidemiology
• Subjects: triage; emergency severity index; emergency department; treatment outcome
• Online Access: https://jprevepi.com/PDF/jpe-5-e11.pdf

Introduction: Triage is prioritizing patients by disease severity in the shortest possible time. Proper triage increases the quality of patient care services, increases patient’s satisfaction, decreases patient waiting time, decreases mortality, and enhances emergency department efficiency. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the concordance of triage performed by nurses with ESI standard, at Rasoul Akram and Haft Tir hospitals, which are the most important educational centers of Iran University of Medical Sciences. Patients and Methods: This is a cross-sectional design study done in 2019. The study population is patients referred to Rasoul Akram and Haft Tir hospitals. A sample of 800 patients was selected. In this study, we determined how triage level were determined and compared with triaging by emergency medicine assistant. Data were analyzed by SPSS 23. Results: Out of 800 samples, the highest triage level was related to level three (79.1%) and levels two, four and one were in the next levels. 13.5% of the cases were not properly triaged according to the ESI standard and the adaptation coefficient (kappa) between the triage level specified in the patient file with the emergency severity index (ESI) triage level between physician and nurse was 58%, which was a significant difference (P<0.001). The relationship between correct triage leveling and patients’ complaints was significant (P<0.001). Conclusion: Nurses triage education about appropriate triage and ESI tool should be one of the most urgent topics and priorities of the studied hospitals. Over triage causes resources wasted and under triage may harm the patient’s health.