Nursing student's awareness of triage in the emergency ward

Triage is a function of the emergency ward carried out by nurses. Patients are required to be categorized according to their medical priorities. Since it is critical for nursing students to have sufficient information about the process of triage, the current study aimed to determine nursing students’ level of awareness of triage in the emergency ward. This cross-sectional descriptive study used census sampling to select 124 nursing students in the 7th and 8th semesters during 2011-12. Data were collected via a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of three parts to assess demographic characteristics, awareness of triage, and decision-making in triage. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics. All analyses were performed in SPSS version 15.0 at a significant level of 0.05. The students’ mean awareness score was 9.0 ± 2.7, i.e. they had low awareness of triage. While the participants had the highest awareness about level 1 triage (31.1 Percent), the x awareness of level 2 triage was the least (13.9 Percent). There was a significant difference in awareness between the students with and without an experience of working in an emergency ward (P< 0.05). The most important source of information was university courses. Lack of time and supervision were found responsible for the students’ low level of awareness. The low awareness scores of the studied students about triage highlighted the need for more supervision during internship, emphasis on triage in university courses, and specialized triage training courses for the students.