Development of practice guideline for Nurses Emergency Department Triage, Trat Hospital

Abstract

The objectives of this research and development were to develop and to evaluate a practice guideline on emergency patient triage classification. Two purposive samples of the 22 registered nurses (RNs) and 500 clients visited in Emergency department. The research instruments were practice guideline on emergency patient triage classification, with content validity of 1.0. Data were collected using: 1) a knowledge test 2) a practice guideline compliance form 3) Compatibility of severity triage between triage out and in nurse. 4) satisfaction and other record forms such as incident report, Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and Kappa statistics.

The results revealed that the practice guideline for Emergency Department Triage comprised of 6 parts: 1) assessment 2) emergency patient triage classification 3) primary nursing care 4) education 5) continuity of care and 6) nursing records. The outcomes of the nursing staff included :1) a significant different at p<.05 on knowledge of emergency severity  triage before and after training 2)  a significant higher than the target  goal criteria at p<.05 on competency to practice according to emergency patient triage classification protocol, 3) a significant higher than the target  goal criteria at p<.05 on satisfaction of using the guideline and 4) consistency of the patient classification between the nurses in front of the emergency room and in the emergency room were at the highest level (kappa = 0.82, p <0.05)  The outcomes of the patients indicated that the percentage of the emergency patients both non-urgent and general did decrease comparing to  the same period of the last year  and no adverse incidents and complaints were found.