Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician

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

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.

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.

Inclusion Criteria:

• >= 16 y
• admitted in GUH ED

Exclusion Criteria:

• patients triaged to outpatient clinics