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When a patient presents with chest pain or chest-related symptoms, the role of the triage nurse is to critically evaluate the relationship of risk factors to outcome potentials to make the best triage decisions. The more risk factors a patient has, the greater the triage nurse’s concern for a potential high-risk scenario. In this blog, we will propose several triage questions for chest pain and consider several serious concerns that can prompt a patient to present with chest-related complaints, not all of which involve the heart:

Accurate triage of patients in an emergency department is critical to timely care and patient safety. 

Read these four clinical tips for triage nurses based on recent trends spotted by RSQ® Collaborative Triage Champion, Shelley Cohen, RN, MSN, CEN. 

Download these tips as a PDF.

Patients with mental health complaints are visiting emergency departments and urgent care centers at an increasing rate. It is imperative that triage staff are able to make rapid and safe decisions for these patients.

Rule #1: Make No Assumptions

Making assumptions in triage is dangerous. Our subconscious biases can lead to cognitive errors in the assessment of patients, particularly those who are agitated.

As leaders in the healthcare industry, we spend a great deal of time and resources analyzing patient outcomes and looking for areas of improvement. In triage, this typically translates to a leadership audit of triage decisions and a report back to staff on areas of improvement.

It’s important to periodically evaluate your audit process for effectiveness and sustainability. To evaluate your current process of triage record reviews, consider the following: