Triage

Background: Implemented in September 2017, the "nurse navigator program" identified the preferred emergency department (ED) destination within a single healthcare system using real-time assessment of hospital and ED capacity and crowding metrics. Objective: The primary objective of the navigator program was to improve load-balancing between two closely situated emergency departments, both of which feed into the same inpatient facilities of a single healthcare system. A registered nurse in the hospital command center made real-time recommendations to emergency medical services (EMS) providers via radio, identifying the preferred destination for each transported patient based on such factors as chief complaint, ED volume, and waiting room census...

BACKGROUND: Early intervention and response to deranged physiological parameters in the critically ill patient improve outcomes. A National Early Warning Score (NEWS) based on physiological observations has been developed for use throughout the National Health Service in the UK. The quick Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment Score (qSOFA) was developed as a simple bedside criterion to identify adult patients outwith the ICU with suspected infection who are likely to have a prolonged ICU stay or die in hospital...

OBJECTIVE: Early identification of shock allows for timely resuscitation. Previous studies note the utility of bedside calculations such as the shock index (SI) and quick sepsis-related organ failure assessment (qSOFA) to detect occult shock. Respiratory rate may also be an important marker of occult shock. The goal of our study was to evaluate whether using a modified SI with respiratory rate would improve identification of emergency department sepsis patients admitted to an ICU or stepdown unit...

BACKGROUND: In patients who call for the emergency medical service (EMS), there is a knowledge gap with regard to the final assessment after arriving at hospital and its association with field assessment. AIM: In a representative population of patients who call for the EMS, to describe a) the final assessment at hospital discharge and b) the association between the assessment in the field and the assessment at hospital discharge. METHODS: Thirty randomly selected patients reached by a dispatched ambulance each month between 1 Jan and 31 Dec 2016 in one urban, one rural and one mixed ambulance organisation in Sweden took part in the study...

BACKGROUND: Emergency medical dispatchers fail to identify approximately 25% of cases of out of hospital cardiac arrest, thus lose the opportunity to provide the caller instructions in cardiopulmonary resuscitation. We examined whether a machine learning framework could recognize out-of-hospital cardiac arrest from audio files of calls to the emergency medical dispatch center. METHODS: For all incidents responded to by Emergency Medical Dispatch Center Copenhagen in 2014, the associated call was retrieved...

OBJECTIVES: Hospital trauma activation criteria are intended to identify children who are likely to require aggressive resuscitation or specific surgical interventions that are time sensitive and require the resources of a trauma team at the bedside. Evidence to support criteria is limited, and no prior publication has provided historical or current perspectives on hospital practices toward informing best practice. This study aimed to describe the published variation in (1) highest level of hospital trauma team activation criteria for pediatric patients and (2) hospital trauma team membership and (3) compare these finding to the current ACS recommendations...

BACKGROUND: In the emergency department, it is important to identify and prioritize who requires an urgent intervention in a short time. Triage helps recognize the urgency among patients. An accurate triage decision helps patients receive the emergency service in the most appropriate time. Various triage systems have been developed and verified to assist healthcare providers to make accurate triage decisions. The triage accuracy can represent the quality of emergency service, but there is a lack of review studies addressing this topic...

BACKGROUND: Parental social characteristics influence the use of emergency departments (ED) in the USA, but less is known about paediatric ED care-seeking in countries with national health insurance. This prospective study was designed to evaluate associations between parental care-seeking and social characteristics, with emphasis on impact of non-native origin, at a paediatric ED in Sweden, a European country providing paediatric healthcare free of charge. METHODS: Parents attending a paediatric ED at a large urban university hospital filled out a questionnaire on social characteristics and reasons for care-seeking...

BACKGROUND: Studies on the reliability of the MTS and its predictive power for hospitalisation and mortality in the older population have demonstrated mixed results. The objective is to evaluate the performance of the Manchester Triage System (MTS) in older patients (≥65 years) by assessing the predictive ability of the MTS for emergency department resource utilisation, emergency department length of stay (ED-LOS), hospitalisation, and in-hospital mortality rate. The secondary goal was to evaluate the performance of the MTS in older surgical versus medical patients...

BACKGROUND: Early warning score systems have been widely recommended for use to detect clinical deterioration in patients. The Irish National Emergency Medicine Programme has developed and piloted an emergency department specific early warning score system. The objective of this study was to develop a consensus among frontline healthcare staff, quality and safety staff and health systems researchers regarding evaluation measures for an early warning score system in the Emergency Department...

BACKGROUND: In mass casualty incidents (MCI), death usually occurs within the first few hours and thus early transfer to a trauma centre can be crucial in selected cases. However, most triage systems designed to prioritize the transfer to hospital of these patients do not assess the need for surgery, in part due to inconclusive evidence regarding the value of such an assessment. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the capacity of a new triage system-the Prehospital Advanced Triage Method (META)-to identify victims who could benefit from urgent surgical assessment in case of MCI...

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of providing risk estimates of clinically important traumatic brain injuries and management recommendations on emergency department (ED) outcomes for children with isolated intermediate Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network clinically important traumatic brain injury risk factors. METHODS: This was a secondary analysis of a nonrandomized clinical trial with concurrent controls, conducted at 5 pediatric and 8 general EDs between November 2011 and June 2014, enrolling patients younger than 18 years who had minor blunt head trauma...

BACKGROUND: The assessment of children in the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) is infrequent representing 5.4% of the patients in an urban area in the western part of Sweden. In Sweden, patients are assessed on scene by an EMS nurse whom independently decides on interventions and level of care. To aid the EMS nurse in the assessment a triage instrument, Rapid Emergency Triage and Treatment System-paediatrics (RETTS-p) developed for Emergency Department (ED) purpose has been in use the last 5 years...

BACKGROUND: It is a challenge to dispatch Emergency medical Services (EMS) appropriately with limited resources and maintaining patient safety; this requires accurate dispatching systems. The objective of the current systematic review was to examine the evidence, according to GRADE, for medical dispatching systems to accurately dispatch EMS according to level of acuity and in recognition of specific conditions. A systematic search was performed trough PubMed, Web of Science, Embase (free text in all fields), Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials up to 16th of May, 2017...

INTRODUCTION: We have previously demonstrated that Emergency General Surgery (EGS) patients treated at high-volume hospitals experience lower mortality rates than those treated at low-volume hospitals. However, EGS comprises a wide spectrum of diseases. Our goal was to determine which EGS diseases had better outcomes at high-volume hospitals. METHODS: We undertook a retrospective analysis of the National Inpatient Sample database for 2013 (a nationwide representative sample)...

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Rapid growth in emergency department (ED) triage literature has been accompanied by diversity in study design, methodology, and outcome assessment. We aim to synthesize existing ED triage literature by using a framework that enables performance comparisons and benchmarking across triage systems, with respect to clinical outcomes and reliability. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science were systematically searched for studies of adult ED triage systems through 2016...

INTRODUCTION: Interarm systolic BP differential is a classic sign of acute aortic dissection (AAD). All previous studies looking at the association of BP differential with AAD combine systolic BP differential >20 mm Hg with pulse deficit. Our aim was to assess the association of systolic BP differential with AAD, and its role in predicting AAD in the context of other signs and symptoms. METHODS: Historical matched case-control study using patient data collected between 2002 and 2014: participants were adults >18 years old with a bilateral BP measurement presenting to two tertiary care EDs or one regional cardiac referral centre in Canada...

OBJECTIVES: Pediatric asthma is a leading cause of emergency department (ED) utilization and hospitalization. Earlier identification of need for hospital-level care could triage patients more efficiently to high- or low-resource ED tracks. Existing tools to predict disposition for pediatric asthma use only clinical data, perform best several hours into the ED stay, and are static or score-based. Machine learning offers a population-specific, dynamic option that allows real-time integration of available nonclinical data at triage...

BACKGROUND: Although all emergency departments (EDs) should be ready to treat children, some may have illnesses or injuries that require higher-level pediatric resources that are not available at all hospitals. There are no national guidelines for emergency medical services (EMS) providers about when to directly transport children to hospitals with higher-level pediatric resources, with the exception of severe trauma. Variability exists in EMS protocols about when children warrant transport to hospitals with higher-level pediatric care...

BACKGROUND: Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) are a scarce resource that can provide advanced emergency medical care to unwell or injured patients. Accurate tasking of HEMS is required to incidents where advanced pre-hospital clinical care is needed. We sought to evaluate any association between non-clinically trained dispatchers, following a bespoke algorithm, compared with HEMS paramedic dispatchers with respect to incidents requiring a critical HEMS intervention. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data from two 12-month periods was performed (Period one: 1st April 2014 - 1st April 2015; Period two: 1st April 2016 - 1st April 2017)...