Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician

Completed

• Conditions: Triage; Emergencies
• Interventions: Other: Triage liaison physician

• Registration Number: NCT02980159
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Geneva

Brief Summary

Due to an increasing number of patients admitted in emergency departments, many patients cannot be evaluated immediately after their admission. The function of "triage liaison physician" was introduced in Spring 2015. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of this new function on patients' flow in the ED.

Detailed Description

Geneva University Hospitals (GUH) emergency department (ED) admits more than 64000 patients every year. These patients are triaged using the Swiss Emergency Triage Scale (SETS), a 4-level triage scale. The SETS imposes time objectives until the first medical evaluation (20 minutes for SETS 2, 2 hours for SETS 3). In 2014, only 60% of level-2 and 63% of level-3 emergencies were evaluated within 20 and 120 minutes respectively.

A triage liaison physician was introduced in Spring 2015 with the mission to help triage nurse in their decisions and to evaluate quickly the patients that cannot be immediately installed in an ED evaluation room.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the triage liaison physician on the times to first medical evaluation.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2016-11
• Study First Submitted: 2016-11-24
• Study First Submitted QC: 2016-12-01
• Study First Posted: 2016-12-02
• Primary Completion: 2017-06
• Study Completion: 2017-06
• Status Verified: 2017-07
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-07-26
• Last Update Posted: 2017-07-27

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 69893

Inclusion Criteria

• >= 16 y
• admitted in GUH ED

Exclusion Criteria

• patients triaged to outpatient clinics

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
After triage liaison physician	Triage liaison physician	All patients admitted after the introduction of the function of triage liaison physician.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Proportion of patients evaluated within SETS objectives	Within 120 minutes after ED triage	Proportion of patients evaluated within time objective as defined by SETS standards.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Time to first medical contact	Within 24 hours after ED triage	Time elapsed between triage and first medical evaluation

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Geneva University Hospitals, ED; 🇨🇭 Geneva, Switzerland