• Marie F Gerdtz, Matthew Chu, Marnie Collins, Julie Considine, Dianne Crellin, Natisha Sands, Carmel Stewart, and Wendy E Pollock.
• The School of Nursing and Social Work, Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. gerdtzmf@unimelb.edu.au
• Emerg Med Australas. 2009 Aug 1;21(4):277-85.

ObjectiveTo examine the influence of the nurse, the type of patient presentation and the level of hospital service on consistency of triage using the Australasian Triage Scale.MethodsA secondary analysis of survey data was conducted. The main study was undertaken to measure the reliability of 237 scenarios for inclusion in a national training programme. Nurses were recruited from a quota sample of Australian ED according to peer group. Analysis was performed to determine concordance: the percentage of responses in the modal triage category. Analysis of variance (anova) and Pearson correlations were used to investigate associations between the explanatory variables and concordance.ResultsA total of 42/50 (84%) participants returned questionnaires, providing 9946 scenario responses for analysis. Significant differences in concordance were observed by variables describing the type of patient presentation and level of urgency. Mean scores for the comparison group (adult pain; 70.7%) were higher than the groups involving a mental health or pregnancy presentations (61.4%; PConclusionWe identified significant problems with the consistency of triage for mental health and pregnancy presentations. Further research is needed to improve the guidelines on the implementation of the Australasian Triage Scale for these populations.

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