Letting Residents Lead: Implementing Resident Admission Triage Call Curriculum and Practice

Graduating residents are expected to be competent in triaging patients to appropriate resources. Before 2017, pediatric residents were not involved in admission triage decisions. In 2017, after implementing an admission triage curriculum (ATC), residents had opportunities to be involved in overnight admission calls with the emergency department (ED), which were initially supervised (joint calls), and as skills progressed, residents conducted calls and admitted patients independently. We implemented and evaluated the impact of a graduated ATC intervention bundle on pediatric resident opportunities to participate in admission triage, while monitoring resident confidence, the ED experience, and patient safety.

We evaluated the impact of our ATC using quality improvement methodology. The primary outcome was the frequency of resident participation in joint and independent triage calls. Other measures included resident confidence, the ED clinician experience, and patient safety. Resident confidence and the ED clinician experience were rated via surveys. Safety was monitored with daytime hospitalist morning assessments and postadmission complications documented in the medical record.

The percent of joint calls with the hospitalist increased from 7% to 88%, and 125 patients were admitted independently. Residents reported significant increases in adequacy of triage training and confidence in 3 triage skills (P < .001) after ATC. There were no complications or safety concerns on patients admitted by residents. ED clinicians reported increased admitting process efficiency and satisfaction.

Our ATC intervention bundle increased the number of admission decision opportunities for pediatric residents, while increasing resident triage confidence, maintaining safety, and improving ED clinician experience.