Blog & Articles

[6 MIN READ]

The national nursing shortage makes recruiting and retaining quality nursing staff extremely competitive. While facilities traditionally might have required 3-5 years of emergency department (ED) experience before training a nurse for triage, the lack of resources has forced some organizations into reducing the requirement to one year or less. As this requirement decreases, it is increasingly critical to have a well-defined onboarding path for nurses new to triage.

Additionally, having well-defined role expectations – especially during onboarding – can have a significant impact on a nurse’s job satisfaction and the likelihood they will stay with your organization.

[3 MIN READ]

After investing in an ongoing triage training program, some emergency department (ED) managers and educators become frustrated due to gaps in the application of that education. The goal of triage is to rapidly identify and sort patients to ensure they receive the appropriate care in the right amount of time. Updated triage practice protocol and ongoing triage training helps ensure optimal patient triaging. Implementing changes though does not always come easily.

[3 MIN READ]

As concerns for COIVD-19 continue to escalate in many areas of the country, it is imperative that triage staff remain alert to their role in early identification of potential infection. 

[2 MIN READ]

Your organization might find itself hiring more new, inexperienced nurses for your emergency department due to the national nursing shortage. While these new hires arrive with a nursing degree, you need to be sure that each has a baseline set of knowledge to effectively treat patients in your ED.

Our RSQ® Solutions – Nursing Clinical Excellence Program was designed to help level-set the knowledge base of your clinical workforce. Our team of experienced ED nurses and educators compiled the blueprint below as a foundation for what an effective continuing education program might look like for your ED staff in their first three years of employment.

[2 MIN READ]

What does your organization’s Employee Satisfaction Survey really tell you about how staff feel about their roles/jobs? The survey result graphs demonstrate areas that need improvement and more, but do they capture the authenticity and essence of how staff feel when they step onto the unit each shift?

[2 MIN READ]

When you serve clinicians with varying experience levels, how do you implement your triage training courses to create an ideal experience for each group?

While your implementation plan and structure might vary based on the size of your facility, our experienced triage educators outline these best practices to streamline your program and ensure that expectations are clear.

How do you determine who is actually competent to triage? If you do have a competency assessment plan, is it documented in writing? How do you know it is effective? Is it up to date?

These and many other questions arise when exploring the development and documentation of a triage competency validation process. Answers to these questions are imperative, as they not only impact litigation that may arise, but are also essential for ensuring the highest quality patient care.

A 25-year-old male presents to an emergency department at his local community hospital with abdominal pain. The department is at its peak time of patient flow, and every bed is filled. The patient is called to the triage area; the nurse assesses him and assigns a triage level decision to his chart. His triage nurse must consider the following:

• Is his abdominal pain a potential for demise?
• How long will he wait to be seen by a provider?
• Is there anything that can be done to expedite his care?

According to ENA, retrospective chart review is a critical element of ongoing triage competency validation. The RSQ® Solutions – Triage Assessment tool is built upon triage best practices and provides a mechanism through which your organization can implement and execute a scalable and sustainable chart review process.

Using this tool, nursing management can easily assess triage competency on an ongoing basis; it allows them to:

• Determine the accuracy of triage levels assigned by an individual nurse or by the entire department.
• Measure overall improvement in a department’s triage accuracy.

Because every patient entering the emergency department needs to be triaged, it is imperative to ensure that every triage nurse maintains accurate clinical decision-making skills that support optimization of patient flow. While the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) has historically recommended ongoing triage competency validation to ensure safe practice in the ED, the organization updated itsTriage Qualifications and Competency Position Statementin 2017 to place greater emphasis on the use of retrospective chart review as a means to ensure accurate clinical decision-making in triage.

In addition to the ENA recommendation, here are five more reasons retrospective chart review is an effective part of a triage competency validation process: