Perceptions of the Essential Components of Triage: A Qualitative Analysis

Triage is an important process to determine severity of illness and prioritize patient emergencies while also ensuring patient safety. The emergency nurse must use critical thinking and decision-making to identify life-threatening emergencies and improve patient outcomes. However, the addition of risk screenings and quality improvement initiatives has extended the triage process time, which may increase interruptions and opportunities for errors. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to determine emergency nurse perceptions of current triage processes and categorize essential and nonessential triage components.

Focus groups of frontline emergency nurses who regularly conduct triage in the emergency department were conducted to discuss perceptions of triage assessments and questions. The 3 focus group discussions were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data analysis consisted of descriptive statistics of the sample and the conventional content analysis of the transcripts.

A total of 12 emergency nurses participated in the study. The overall theme that emerged surrounding essential triage components was a perceived conflict between individualized care and maintaining systems and processes. This theme consisted of 4: (a) must ask, (b) actions of triage, (c) relevant but not urgent for triage, and (d) not perceived as relevant.

This study identified the perceptions of emergency nurses surrounding the urgency of triage components in the emergency department. Emergency nurses perceived some assessments as essential to determining "sick versus not sick," and other triage components were able to be delayed, streamlining the triage process.