Role of Triage in Emergency Care Assignment

Role of Triage in Emergency Care

OVERVIEW

There is a consensus on the fact that there has been a significant increase in traffic to emergency rooms which has resulted in rapidly growing demand on the limited resources of emergency rooms worldwide. In 1980, there were more than 82 million visit to hospital Emergency rooms in the USA, and a large percentage were for non urgent medical conditions. One reason for this trend is that people know they can get medical attention immediately in the Emergency departments without the long wait for appointments. This has led to very high load of patients visit to emergency rooms; a pattern that holds true globally for non urgent patient visits to most pediatric emergency rooms ( Wilson FO etal ).

Another reason given for overcrowding is the increase rural to urban migration of populations and also the increase in the standard of care provided in most emergency room.

However, the resulting increase in demand for emergency medical care has not been matched by availability of resources in most healthcare systems and hence there is need for emergency room managers to adopt or develop tools and protocols to prioritize the urgency and acuity of conditions to allocate appropriate level of care. If this is not done, then there is a likelihood that very ill patients may end up waiting long hours with increased risk of morbidity and some may even die as a result of delay in life saving treatment or interventions. (Mirjam van veen and Harriette a Moll).

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