Abstract

Aim. The aim of this study was to determine the current quality of triage in intensive care units for patients admitted to hospital emergency departments in ShahidBeheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2012.

Background. Accurate and rapid patient triage in emergency departments is the key to a successful performance. The study and understanding of the current condition and evaluation  of the  educational needs of triage nurses are highly important.

Method. This study is a retrospective descriptive study in which the data were gathered via in a list of ESI  triage forms. To determine the content validity of data collection tools was used. In this study, the reliability of the test listed under triage nurse was both between observers and reliability with Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) : 0.857 was specified.

Findings. In this study,23% of the case were undertriage and 11.7% were overtriage.The most of undertriage cases was level 3 based on Emergency Severity Index  (ESI) system. There is a direct correlation between the mortality and hospitalization in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and undertriage.

Conclusion. There was no statistically significant difference between proper triage and undertriage cases in  mean length of hospital stay, duration of hospitalization and emergency department waiting time for the first visit of  the emergency physician.