Pediatric Emergency Resident – Nurse Teaching: a Survey of an Innovative Method

Abstract

Background: Triage is one of the most important steps in the emergency department (ED), as it helps to recognize the urgency among patients. A proper triage system identifies the most critical patients regardless of the time of presentation. Triage nurses rarely can follow up on their triaged patients to verify the accuracy of their decision.

Methods: A teaching session on male genitalia triage by a Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) resident was given to triage nurses and a survey was sent afterwards to all participants to evaluate the confidence in their triage accuracy before and after the session.

Results: The results showed a statistically significant increase in the confidence of nurses in avoiding both undertriage and overtriage accuracy. Also, all the nurses recommended attending similar talks given by a PEM resident. This study has helped in ameliorating interprofessional relationship between the nurses and residents especially with the increased use of masks. However, the number of nurses is too small to be representative and a bigger quality improvement study is needed.

Conclusion: PEM resident-nurses teaching is an innovative method to improve the accuracy and quality of triage and to help establish good interpersonal relationship skills in the pediatric ED. More studies are needed in the future to validate this technique so that it can be implemented for all presentations.