Australian training kit for hospital ERs
[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 2, No. 2
18 February - 3 March 2008 ] By Janine Sim-Jones
The University of Melbourne’s School of Nursing has led the development of a new training kit for Australia’s hospital emergency departments.
More than 1500 copies of the Emergency Triage Education Kit, funded by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing, were distributed to hospitals across Australia late last year.
Project leader Dr Marie Gerdtz says the kit covers all of the areas commonly encountered by triage nurses and includes 155 scenarios of a range of common health problems from chest pain to spider bites, with explicit information on how to assess them.
“Most importantly, this kit provides for the first time tools and advice for triage nurses on how to assess and manage emergency presentations related to special populations including pregnant women, children and people with mental health problems,” she says.
As part of her research to develop the kit, Dr Gerdtz surveyed a panel of 42 expert triage nurses working in different emergency departments around Australia.
The nurses were required to make urgency assessments on more than 200 patient presentations commonly encountered in Australian emergency departments including pregnant women, children and people with mental health related problems. Among those surveyed:
Almost half (47.6 per cent) did not agree on the level of urgency for scenarios involving pregnant women;
Similarly, almost half (47.5 per cent) did not agree on the level of urgency for scenarios involving mental illness;
Almost a third (32 per cent) did not agree on the level of urgency for children presenting in emergency departments.
“Our analysis showed a less consistent approach among nurses when assessing urgency for people who are pregnant, under the age of 18 or have a mental health problem, when compared with other common emergency department presentations,” Dr Gerdtz says.
She describes the Emergency Triage Education Kit as an important step in providing more consistent advice for all triage nurses working in emergency departments.
Dr Gerdtz says that while all hospitals use the Australasian Triage Scale Guidelines to determine risks, the kit gives nurses hands-on, practical ways to apply the guidelines and identify the predictors of risks for patients.
“The kit will help nurses take a more consistent approach to assessing risk in patients.
“A consistent approach will ensure that all people who come to an Australian emergency department will receive a level of care that is commensurate with their clinical condition,” she says.
The kit was developed in collaboration with the College of Emergency Nursing Australasia (CENA), the Australian College of Emergency Nursing, the Council of Remote Area Nurses of Australia (CRANA) and the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine (ACEM)
In addition to being distributed in the Australian hospital system, it will also be donated to the Chilean Government for use in its hospitals.
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