Emergency Room Triage System In Emergency Department

Triage is the process by which emergency departments eds sort patients presenting for medical treatment.

Emergency room triage system in emergency department.

It is maintained by the agency for healthcare research and quality ahrq. Triage is a process that is critical to the effective management of modern emergency departments. Triagecan be defined as the prioritization of patient carebased on the severity of injury illness prognosis and availability of resources. The purpose of a triage system is to ensure that the level of emergency care provided is commensurate with clinical criteria.

Emergency department triage is increasingly instrumental in ensuring high quality timely care. A triage system is the essential structure by which all incoming emergency patients are prioritised using a standard rating scale. Rather than operating on a first come first served system like you would expect at a restaurant emergency departments use the triage system to sort patients into categories so that they can attend to patients who need urgent help first. Triage is the name of the system that is used to sort when and where patients will be seen in an emergency department.

Using triage in the emergency department started in the early 1960s when there was more demand for medical care and less medical emergency resources farrokhnia göransson 2011 and is now accepted as the golden standard to promote safe practice and reliable and effective systems mistry et al 2018. The emergency severity index esi is a five level emergency department triage algorithm initially developed in 1999. Esi triage is based on the acuity of patients health care problems and the number of resources their care is anticipated to require. The australasian triage scale validated to measure urgency answers the question this patient should wait for medical assessment and treatment no longer than.

Every emergency department has a triage or triaging area to sort incoming patients. As ed volumes have increased so have wait times. Triage systems aim not only to ensure clinical justice for the patient but also to provide an effective tool for departmental organisation monitoring and evaluation. The nurse also decides where to direct the patient for treatment within the ed.

When patients report to the emergency department of upmc western maryland our staff uses a method called triage to determine who needs to be seen first. The trauma room an acute treatment area the rapid assessment zone or the fast track unit. What this means is that we evaluate the severity of patient symptoms rather than take patients back to a room in the emergency department based on the order they checked in.