The Australasian triage scale: examining emergency department nurses' performance using computer and paper scenarios Considine, Julie, LeVasseur, Sandra and Villanueva, E. 2004, The Australasian triage scale: examining emergency department nurses' performance using computer and paper scenarios, Annals of emergency medicine, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 516-523, doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2004.04.007. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title The Australasian triage scale: examining emergency department nurses' performance using computer and paper scenarios Author(s) Considine, Julie orcid.org/0000-0003-3801-2456 LeVasseur, Sandra Villanueva, E. Journal name Annals of emergency medicine Volume number 44 Issue number 5 Start page 516 End page 523 Publisher Mosby-Year Book, Inc. Place of publication St. Louis, Mo. Publication date 2004-11 ISSN 0196-0644 1097-6760 Summary Study objective: The purpose of this study is to examine emergency nurses' performance using triage scenarios characterized by type of patient population (adult versus pediatric) and mode of delivery (paper versus computer). Methods:   A combination of paper-based (script alone) and computer-based (script plus still photographs) triage scenarios were used. Of the 28 scenarios used, half were written and half were computer based. Within each subgroup, there were 7 adult and 7 pediatric scenarios. Participants were asked to allocate an Australasian Triage Scale category for each triage scenario. Results: One hundred sixty-seven participants completed a total of 2,349 adult scenarios, and 161 participants completed 2,265 pediatric scenarios. Sixty-one percent of the triage decisions made by the nurses were “expected” triage decisions, 18% were “undertriage,” decisions, and 21% were “overtriage” decisions. Nurse triage allocation decisions for the scenarios containing still photographs delivered by computer demonstrated a higher average agreement percentage of 66.2% (κ=0.56; τb=0.77; P<.0001) compared with the average agreement percentage of 55.4% (κ=0.42; τb=0.75; P<.0001) using paper-based (text-only) scenarios. Conclusion: The mode of delivery appeared to have an effect on the nurses' triage performance. It is unclear whether the use of simple still photographs used in the computer mode of delivery resulted in a higher incidence of expected triage decisions and, thus, improved performance. The use of cues such as photographs and video footage to enhance the fidelity of triage scenarios may be useful not only for the education of triage nurses but also the conduct of research into triage decisionmaking. However, further exploration and research in this area are warranted. Language eng DOI 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2004.04.007 Field of Research 111003 Clinical Nursing: Secondary (Acute Care) HERDC Research category C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal Copyright notice ©2003, American College of Emergency Physicians Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30004255 Document type: Journal Article Collections: Faculty of Health School of Nursing and Midwifery Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research Related Links Link Description Connect to published version Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Thu, 08 Jan 2009, 07:21:52 EST Wed, 30 Sep 2009, 15:28:22 EST Fri, 09 Apr 2010, 15:13:03 EST Tue, 04 Jun 2013, 11:16:42 EST Fri, 10 Oct 2014, 08:17:57 EST Filtered Full Citation counts:   Cited 94 times in TR Web of Science Cited 98 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 2146 Abstract Views, 0 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Mon, 07 Jul 2008, 09:16:18 EST