Perceptions of Emergency Department Triage Nurses About Prehospital Emergency Rescuers in Italy: A Latent Threat to...

In Italy, volunteer rescuers respond to most prehospital emergency calls. These rescuers provide the majority of patient information during handover at the emergency department triage. Standardized terminology between rescuers and triage nurses is lacking in Italy, and miscommunication may cause a poor handover. Even though rescuers are professional health providers, their qualification is not legally recognized, and triage nurses have a pervasive sense of inadequacy about the rescuers' competences.This work explored triage nurses' perceptions of rescuers and the causes of these perceptions to verify whether difficult interprofessional relationships negatively influence the clinical handover process.

We performed a survey among 402 triage nurses for 3 main areas of rescuers' competency: communication, knowledge, and decision making. For each area, we identified communications, decision making, and knowledge indicators. A scale score of 6 or higher was considered not sufficient.

We found that 75.5% (n = 302/400) of triage nurses regard rescuers' ability to recognize life-threatening situations as not sufficient (communication ability indicator). Approximately 66% (n = 264/401) of triage nurses regard rescuers' ability to administer oxygen as not sufficient (decision-making indicator), and approximately 58% (n = 232/402) of nurses regard rescuers' ability to report the reason for the emergency call as not sufficient (knowledge indicator).

The results of this survey show that the overall perception of triage nurses about prehospital rescuers is slightly below sufficiency. This perception could cause errors during the prehospital or hospital handover at the triage and could lead to delayed decisions and incorrect treatment.