Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician

Emergencies Clinical Trial

Official title:

Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician on the Time to First Medical Evaluation in the Emergency Departement

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02980159
• Other study ID #: CCER 2016-00179
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• First received: November 24, 2016
• Last updated: July 26, 2017
• Start date: November 2016
• Est. completion date: June 2017

Study information

• Verified date: July 2017
• Source: University Hospital, Geneva
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

Due to an increasing number of patients admitted in emergency departments, many patients cannot be evaluated immediately after their admission. The function of "triage liaison physician" was introduced in Spring 2015. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of this new function on patients' flow in the ED.

Description:

Geneva University Hospitals (GUH) emergency department (ED) admits more than 64000 patients every year. These patients are triaged using the Swiss Emergency Triage Scale (SETS), a 4-level triage scale. The SETS imposes time objectives until the first medical evaluation (20 minutes for SETS 2, 2 hours for SETS 3). In 2014, only 60% of level-2 and 63% of level-3 emergencies were evaluated within 20 and 120 minutes respectively.

A triage liaison physician was introduced in Spring 2015 with the mission to help triage nurse in their decisions and to evaluate quickly the patients that cannot be immediately installed in an ED evaluation room.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the triage liaison physician on the times to first medical evaluation.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 69893
• Est. completion date: June 2017
• Est. primary completion date: June 2017
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 16 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• >= 16 y

• admitted in GUH ED

Exclusion Criteria:

• patients triaged to outpatient clinics

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Emergencies
• Triage

Intervention

Other:
• Triage liaison physician
A triage liaison physician is present from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm, Monday to Friday, with the mission to evaluate quickly patients who cannot be immediately installed in an ED room

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Switzerland	Geneva University Hospitals, ED	Geneva

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University Hospital, Geneva

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Switzerland, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Proportion of patients evaluated within SETS objectives	Proportion of patients evaluated within time objective as defined by SETS standards.	Within 120 minutes after ED triage
Secondary	Time to first medical contact	Time elapsed between triage and first medical evaluation	Within 24 hours after ED triage