PUSHing forward with healthcare emergency classification: Introducing the predictability-urgency-scale-harm model.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Healthcare Management
• Emergency Medicine

Background:

• Healthcare emergencies are frequent and diverse but lack clear conceptual definitions in health professions education.
• Existing educational materials for managing emergencies revealed a gap in comprehensive frameworks for describing emergency characteristics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Predictability-Urgency-Scale-Harm (PUSH) model, a novel multidimensional taxonomy for characterizing healthcare emergencies.
• To provide a framework that enhances the educational and clinical management of healthcare emergencies.

Main Methods:

• Development of the PUSH model, a taxonomy based on four dimensions: predictability, urgency, scale, and harm.
• Adaptation of the World Health Organization's definition of emergencies for practical clinical application.

Main Results:

• The PUSH model categorizes emergencies by predictability (fully to unpredictable), urgency (pressing to immediate), scale (individual to population), and harm (none to severe).
• This multidimensional approach moves beyond existing one-dimensional acuity or triage scales.

Conclusions:

• The PUSH model offers a versatile tool for educators and clinicians to design simulations, assess learner exposure, and foster shared understanding within healthcare teams.
• It has the potential to improve research design, enhance study comparability, and is applicable across various resource settings.
• Future research will focus on expert consensus for refinement and evaluation of the model's educational impact and reliability.