Triage Handoff

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Specializes in Emergency Department.

Our ED recently had a patient with a bad outcome after mis-triage. One of the things administration wants us to do to prevent such an event from happening again is to develop a written triage hand-off tool. I have never worked in an ED with any sort of formal triage hand-off. The off going triage nurse always briefs the on coming triage nurse about patients waiting--like who needs to come back first, if any patients are already in X-ray, etc. Does anyone out there formally document triage hand-off at shift change? If so, how do you do it? I think our administration is being unrealistic!

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Specializes in ER.

It's a verbal report here.

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Specializes in Emergency.

Verbal too.

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Specializes in ED.

Our EMR Triage screen shows us all this information. We get a quick verbal breakdown but you can see all the info on one screen.

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It is very unrealistic. Admin is just trying to say they found a solution by adding another piece of paper for the nurse to deal with. Once you've triaged and the pt is ready to go back, it's up to whoever is choosing pts to get that one back...what is another paper going to do to change anything. You can look in the computor and see who is there, or if you're all paper, go through the charts...or are you expected to retriaged everyone all over again? Filling out yet another paper/form isn't goin to accomolish anything but waste more time. If the outcome was bad, why was it missed or not brought back? No rooms, error? No staff? Inexperience?

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