Triage Nurse-Ordered Testing in the Emergency Department Setting: A Review of the Literature for the Clinician

In an effort to decrease length of stay (LOS) and reduce overcrowding, many emergency departments (ED) have implemented triage nurse-ordered testing.

To review the medical literature to determine the utility of triage nurse-ordered testing and to offer evidence-based recommendations to emergency physicians.

A systematic search of the PubMed literature was performed for publication in English from inception to November 30, 2019 using a combination of the following keywords: "triage," "nurse," "protocol," and "emergency." The articles were screened for relevance and the selected studies were subjected to detailed review by all of the authors and assigned a grade of evidence based on focus, research design, and methodology. Recommendations were drawn from the findings.

The initial search yielded a total of 982 potentially relevant studies; 13 articles were ultimately selected for inclusion. Of these, 10 studies assessed ED LOS, with one study assessing time to diagnosis. The three remaining studies compared triage nurse-ordered testing with physician testing in the ED setting.

Triage nurses have reasonably similar accuracy as physicians in ordering limb x-ray studies and moderate accuracy for laboratory testing. However, we did not identify a clinically meaningful decrease in ED LOS from the use of nursing triage orders.