How private is your triage?

[foragreatergood]

Just wondering how important is privacy in your triage area? Do you limit visitors? Close curtains? If a patient had a very personal complaint, could they describe it to you without others hearing it?

[Nalon1 RN/EMT-P, BSN, RN]

Our triage room is a closed room with only the nurse, pt and those the pt brings in with them.

[DayDreamin ER CRNP]

Our triage rooms (4) have a door leading from the lobby and one that goes out "the back" in case we do need to get someone back quickly w/out having to go back through the lobby. Doncha know people will get irate if someone goes back before they do.

We try to only triage the pt but the pt often has at least one visitor so we try to limit it to just one but you know everyone wants to be in there. The rooms are just too small. Plus, you get more than one family member in there and it is utter chaos. Everyone has to chime in and no one has time for all of that.

[foragreatergood]

We are trying to start a new process of not having anyone but the patient (unless its a child) back to the triage area. Most staff and patients seem to be fine with it. It makes the process faster and less complicated without input from the visitors. But I'm just trying to get a sense of how most ER's do this. We have one big triage room, so visitors are often listening to the information from other patients, seems like a violation of privacy.

[DayDreamin ER CRNP]

We are trying to start a new process of not having anyone but the patient (unless its a child) back to the triage area. Most staff and patients seem to be fine with it. It makes the process faster and less complicated without input from the visitors. But I'm just trying to get a sense of how most ER's do this. We have one big triage room, so visitors are often listening to the information from other patients, seems like a violation of privacy.

A family member can be beneficial to triage in some situations for sure. Not just for a child.

We see about 200-225 (or more) pts per day so having just a curtained area would not work for that kind of census. If you are a smaller ER, you might be able to accommodate that but I would consider having a wall installed or something to provide a little bit of privacy.

We also do EKGs out in triage so a curtain would not suffice at all for us.

[skylark, BSN, RN]

No doors, just a series of stations/cubicles leading off the waiting room. Absolutely no privacy at all.

Everything can be heard and seen from the waiting room.

Never worked anywhere else where this was acceptable, and I worked in 5 other ERs before this one and never seen anything like this!

[lhflanurseNP, APRN]

Ours is 1 room right there off the waiting room so everyone can see/hear what is going on. Not a good thing at all!

[NickiLaughs, ADN, BSN, RN]

You all have rooms and walls? We have a desk in the waiting room and we yell names and take vitals right there. How long we have been asking for a wall or something....yeah.

[foragreatergood]

I think its surprising that hospitals aren't more concerned with protecting private health information in the triage setting. So much emphasis is putting on privacy ( minimizing computer screens, removing patient identifiers etc) yet its a free for all in triage.

[CBlover, BSN, RN]

our triage room has that glass you can't see through from the outside and yes, it's a private room so no one can hear what's being said