Drill; A Solution to Reduce Mistriage in Prehospital Emergency Setting

Triage is used as one of the main concepts in the emergency medicine to differentiate between critically ill patients or patients in a non-emergency situation. Miss-triage occurs if the prioritization of patients or injured is not done correctly for any reason. Miss-triage occurs in two forms of over and under triage. According to studies, the incidence of miss-triage is high worldwide. Exercising is one of the ways to reduce the amount of miss-triage.

. This two-group pretest post-test intervention study aimed to investigate the effect of drilling on the miss-triage of emergency medical service personnel.

The tools used in this study included: demographic information form questionnaire, Triage Decision Making Inventory (TDMI), and designed START/jump START triage scenarios. After collecting the required data, these data were analyzed by appropriate parametric and non-parametric statistical tests, including mean and standard deviation, independent t-test, paired t-test, K-square.

Results showed that the Miss-triage rate decreased from (34.1%) before the intervention to (9.1%) after the intervention in the experimental group. Moreover, after drill, the score of triage decision-making power increased from (121) to (136.91). However, in the control group, no statistically significant change was observed in the amount of miss-triage and triage decision-making power in emergency medical service personnel at the end of the study (p>.05).

The findings of the present study revealed the effectiveness of this exercise method in reducing miss-triage in participants. Thus, this method could be used in emergency medical service personnel training and preparation programs.