• Emília Miró, Òscar Miró, Angèlica Varón, Pepi Marrón, Carmen Canóniga, Pilar Salgado, Alba Mola, Inmaculada Castro, Ramón Montoya, Jordi Llaneras, Alejandro Smithson, Margarita Sotomayor, Neus Robert, Emma Picart, Paul Salazar, Alexis Rebollo, Emili Gené, Alberto Villamor, and Urgències VIHgila.
• Enfermería, Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron, Barcelona, España. Facultad de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud, Universitat de Barcelona, España. Societat Catalana de Medicina d'Urgències i Emergències (SoCMUE), Barcelona, España.
• Emergencias. 2024 Jun 1; 36 (3): 188196188-196.

ObjectivesTo evaluate the impact of specialized training for nurses on selective screening for undetected HIV infection in the emergency department.Material And MethodsThe intervention group was comprised of 6 emergency departments that had been participating in a screening program (the "Urgències VIHgila" project) for at least 3 months. Nurses on all shifts attended training sessions that emphasized understanding the circumstances that should lead to suspicion of unidentified HIV infection and the need to order serology. Two studies were carried out: 1) a quasi-experimental pre-post study to compare the number of orders for HIV serology in each time period and measures of sensitivity, and 2) a case-control study to compare the changes made in the 6 hospitals where specialized training was provided (cases) vs 6 control hospitals in the HIV screening program where no training was given.ResultsA total of 280 HIV serologies were ordered for the 81015 patients (0.3%) attended during the period before training; 331 serologies were ordered for the 79620 patients in the period after training (0.4%). The relative increase in serologies was 20.3% (95% CI, 2.9% to 34.5%; P = .022). The relative increase in measures of sensitivity ranged between 19% and 39%, consistent with the main comparison. Serologies in the control group decreased between periods, from 0.9% to 0.8%, indicating a relative decrease of 15.7% (95% CI, -25.1% to -6.2%; P = .001). The absolute number of patients tested in the training group was 0.2% higher in the training hospitals (95% CI, 0.11% to 0.31%; P .001) than in the control hospitals.ConclusionTraining nurses to screen for undetected HIV infection in the emergency department increased the number of patients tested, according to the pre-post and case-control comparisons.

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