RNkalima

one of the criticisms i received on the triage of this pt was that i did not have him undress to assess the site in triage. our triage has a window in it, so i didn't feel it was appropriate in that setting due to the lack of privacy.

thank you all for all the input. it makes me feel better. i did triage this pt as a level 4. turns out he had forniers gangrene and the provider tried to send this pt home. that was the issue we were pushing with the one's criticizing us. so far nothing is being done about the provider who was refusing to keep the pt after he started to go downhill. me and one other nurse were the only one's trying to push for this pt to stay or be transferred to a better equiped facility when 3 hours after i triaged him he spiked a fever of >102, went tachycardic and bp started to drop. the patient looked awful at that time. a complete 180 in comparison to when i originally saw him. if any of us had had experience seeing fornier's gangrene we may have triaged differently, but considering he looked good and every thing was originally stable we still probably would've given him a 4. if only every one who does triage could be psychic, how much easier it would be. but thank you all for you're comments on this. i had to go to a peer review which was full of head of other departments and only one nurse who hadn't even had any triage experience or done pt care in years and they were telling me i did my job wrong and that was way the pt went bad so fast. had me really questioning myself. so thank you all for your opinions, it really does make me feel better.

i was recently criticized at work for how i triaged a pt. i was wondering how anyone out there may have triaged this pt: a patient presented to us with a chief complaint of a boil in the left groin region for 3 days. pt stated a hx of these and that they normally drained on their own after 2 days. pt stated this one had not started to drain yet and was becoming painful. pt was requesting to have it lanced. pt VS were stable as listed: HR 86 T99.8 R20 BP 120/80, pain 7/10. pt did not appear to be in distress. What ESI rating would anyone else have given this pt? any input would be helpful.