Journal of emergency nursing : JEN : official publication of the Emergency Department Nurses Association
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Health information exchange holds the promise of sharing critical information about patients across organizations. We have found that emergency nurses have little or no involvement in using health information exchange and, often, they are not granted access by individual hospital policies. Yet, emergency nurses need to know this information and must have full access to health information exchange. We provide recommendations to ensure that emergency nurses are able to reach their full potential in using health information exchange to care for patients.
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Observational Study
Emergency Medical Services Triage Using the Emergency Severity Index: Is it Reliable and Valid?
Efficient communication between emergency medical services (EMS) and ED providers using a common triage system may enable more effective transfers when EMS arrives in the emergency department. We sought (1) to evaluate inter-rater reliability between Emergency Severity Index (ESI) assignments designated by EMS personnel and emergency triage nurses (registered nurses [RNs]) and (2) to evaluate the validity of EMS triage assignments using the ESI instrument. ⋯ We observed moderate concordance between EMS and RN ESI triage assignments. EMS sensitivity for correct acuity assignment was generally poor, whereas specificity for correctly not assigning a particular level was better. Additional research investigating the potential causes of the poor agreement that we observed is warranted.