Abstract

Inefficient procedures in place at any point in the emergency department (ED) can create a bottleneck and result in significant adverse effects, particularly for patients with time-sensitive conditions such as acute myocardial infarction, sepsis, or acute stroke. This project explores improving the input phase to ensure that patients presenting to the ED are assessed without unnecessary delay. The current set-up has patients that arrive to the ED waiting area to check-in with a registration clerk who enters the patient’s name, date of birth and chief complaint into Medhost, the ED electronic health record (EHR) and then registers the patient in Meditech for billing and insurance. The patient’s name appearing in the EHR is what alerts the triage nurse that there is a patient to be seen; there is no clinically trained person who is stationed in or with an unobstructed view of the waiting room. The triage nurse pulls the patient directly to an exam room if available or to the triage room and completes a focused assessment and documents chief complaint, vital signs, allergies, medical history, home medication list, surgical history, travel screen, sepsis screen, suicide screen, pain, and assigns an acuity level. The current process has ample room for error and the potential for adverse events to occur.

Author Details

Jacquline Jansen, DNP, RN, FNP-C, CEN

Sigma Membership

Gamma Eta

Lead Author Affiliation

Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Type

DNP Capstone Project

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Quality Improvement

Research Approach

Translational Research/Evidence-based Practice

Keywords:

Emergency Department (ED), Triage, Pivot Nurse

Advisor

Cunningham, Jill

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Samford University

Degree Year

2020

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2020-07-17

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