Evaluation of Emergency Severity Index (ESI) triage quality by nurses and associated factors in Iran

The triage process of patients in emergency departments is done by nurses in Iran. it is necessary to pay attention to the ability of nurses in patients' triage in order to have a correct picture of the status of the emergency department, so the aims of this study is to investigate the quality of nurses' triage using the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) method and related factors.

This is a descriptive study which was performed on all 900 patients referring to the emergency department during 12 months from 2019 to 2020 in the Triage unit of two trauma center hospitals affiliated to Isfahan university of medical sciences. Data collection tools included patients' demographic, nurses' demographic and occupational checklist, and ESI Triage Form. To analyze the data, SPSS software was used, descriptive and analytic statistics were used, P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

No significant difference was observed between the quality level of triage by nurses and physicians (P > 0.05), the results of independent t-test showed that nurses in the over triage group have a higher average age and work experience. In the under triage level, the frequency of female nurses was significantly higher than male nurses (P < 0/05).

Accurate and fast triage of patients is the key to successful performance in the emergency department. Therefore correct implementation of triage and identifying the need for nurses for training and identifying existing deficiencies are of utmost importance.