Studying nurses' performance and effectiveness in patient triage by emergency severity index in Kermanshah educational and medical centers in 2016

Introduction: One of the most important tasks of nurses is to save the lives of clients in emergencies. Having an efficient triage system is one of the basic needs of the emergency department. Therefore, we conducted the present research to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of nurses in patient triage by emergency severity index method. Method: The present research is a descriptive study performed on all eligible triage nurses in the emergency department of educational and medical centers affiliated to Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences. Samples were selected by census. Data were collected through three tools, including: personal-job profile form, checklist of performance evaluation of triage nurses and triage algorithm by emergency severity index method. The validity of the three tools was confirmed by the formal and content validity method. The reliability of the performance appraisal checklist was determined by calculating Cronbach's alpha; the reliability of the triage algorithm for evaluating the effectiveness was determined by the correlation among observers. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 20 and descriptive tests. Results: In studying the performance of triage nurses, the mean and standard deviation of participants' scores were 82.69 and 12.99, respectively, the lowest score was 24.71 and the highest was 100. 85.4% of nurses had a performance score between 76 and 100. In the study of effectiveness, 84.4% of nurses had 3 or 4 correct triage of 4 opportunities. Of the 412 triage trials, 329 were correct; the under and over triage were 42 and 41 cases, respectively. Conclusion: The performance of nurses was at an acceptable level; the effectiveness of nurses was optimal. However, given that 20.1% of the triage was under or over, this indicates the need to conduct triage courses among nurses.