Reliability and validity of three international triage systems within a private health-care group in the Middle East

To measure and compare the reliability and validity of three international triage systems (CTAS, MTS and ESI) when applied to patient presentations in the emergency centres of a private health-care group in the United Arab Emirates.

The ability of triage systems to sort patients into categories based on the urgency of their need and time to physician is a key indicator. Three international triage systems are being used for this purpose in private emergency centre settings.

Bespoke reference scenarios, 50 vignettes (10 per severity level) were created and validated by a local expert panel. Nurses performing triage at four emergency centres in the Emirate of Dubai completed online surveys to categorise the vignettes based on the triage system they used in their emergency centre.

Overall inter-rater reliability per triage category was substantial for allocations in category one, moderate for those in categories two and five, and fair for those in categories three and four. Agreement between raters and the reference standard was consistent throughout all four emergency centres. The accuracy of triaging allocations into categories one, two and five were good, whereas allocations in categories three and four were less accurate.

International triage systems focus on the identification of more urgent cases and perform poorly in discriminating between those that are less serious, which is less ideal in a setting where less-serious cases are more prevalent.