• Keneth Opiro, Lee Wallis, and Martin Ogwang.
• Gulu University Faculty of Medicine, P.O.Box, 166 Gulu Uganda.
• Afr Health Sci. 2017 Jun 1; 17 (2): 481490481-490.

BackgroundLimited health service resources must be used in a manner which does "the most for the most". This is partly achieved through the use of a triage system. Whereas efforts have been made to introduce paediatric triage in Uganda such as Emergency Triage Assessment and Treatment Plus (ETAT+), it is not clear if hospitals have local protocols for adult triage being used in each setting.ObjectivesTo determine the presence of existing hospital triage systems, the cadre of staff undertaking triage and barriers to development/improvement of formal triage systems.MethodologyThis was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Acholi sub-region was randomly selected for the study among the three sub-regions in Northern Uganda. The study was conducted in 6 of the 7 hospitals in the region. It was a written self-administered questionnaire.ResultsThirty-three participants from 6 hospitals consented and participated in the study. Only one hospital (16.7%) of the 6 hospitals surveyed had a formal hospital-based adult triage protocol in place. Only 2 (33.3%) hospitals had an allocated emergency department, the rest receive emergency patients/perform triage from OPD and wards. Lack of training, variation of triage protocols from hospital to another, shortage of staff on duty, absence of national guidelines on triage and poor administrative support were the major barriers to improvement/development of formal triage in all these hospitals.ConclusionFormal adult hospital-based triage is widely lacking in Northern Uganda and staff do perform subjective "eyeball" judgments to make triage decisions.

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