Nurses working with Manchester triage - The impact of experience on patient security

摘要

Background: There is in Sweden an ongoing debate about the extent to which the practice of triage contributes to patient safety. This paper reports the findings of a study of nurses' perceptions of the impact of experience and safety of the Manchester Triage System (MTS) within emergency departments in Western Sweden. Methods: Data was collected from 74 triage nurses using a questionnaire containing 37 short form questions of Likert-type, analyzed descriptively and measured the covariance. Data was also collected with two open questions by using the critical incident technique and content analysis. Results: The results described that the combination of the MTS method, the nurses' experience and organizational factors accounted for 65% of patient safety. The study indicated that nurses' experience contributed to higher patient safety than the model itself. A standardized assessment model, like MTS, can rarely capture all possible symptoms, as it will always be constrained by a limited number of keywords and taxonomies. It cannot completely replace the skills an experienced nurse develops over many years in the profession. Conclusions: The present study highlights the value of triage nurse's experience. The participants considered experience to contribute to patient safety in emergency departments. A standardized triage model should be considered as additional support to the skills an experienced nurse develops.