Triage level assignment and nurse characteristics and experience

To study the relation between nursing staff demographics and experience and their assignment of triage level in the emergency department.

One-year retrospective observational study in the triage area of a tertiary care urban university hospital that applies the Andorran-Spanish triage model. Variables studied were age, gender, nursing experience, triage experience, shift, usual level of emergency work the nurse undertakes, number of triage decisions made, and percentage of patients assigned to each level.

Fifty nurses (5 men, 45 women) with a mean (SD) age of 45 (9) years triaged 67 803 patients during the year. Nurses classified more patients in level 5 on the morning shift (7.9%) than on the afternoon shift (5.5%) (P=.003). The difference in the rate of level-5 triage classification became significant when nurses were older (β = 0.092, P=.037) and experience was greater (β = 0.103, P=.017). The number of triages recorded by a nurse was significantly and directly related to the percentage of patients assigned to level 3 (β = 0.003, P=.006) and inversely related to the percentages assigned to level 4 (β = -0.002, P=.008) and level 5 (β = -0.001, P=.017).

We found that triage level assignments were related to age, experience, shift, and total number of patients triaged by a nurse.