Can J Emerg Med
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The Emergency Severity Index (ESI) is an initial measure of patient assessment in the emergency department (ED). It rates patients based on acuity and predicted resource intensity from Level 1 (most ill) to Level 5 (least resource intensive). Already implemented and evaluated in several US hospitals, ESI has yet to be evaluated in a Canadian setting or compared with the five-level Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS). ⋯ After 3 hours of training, experienced triage nurses were able to perform triage assessments using ESI v.3 with the same inter-observer reliability as those with experience and refresher training in using the CTAS.
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It may be appropriate for nurse practitioners (NPs) to provide care for a subset of emergency department (ED) patients with non-urgent problems. Our objective was to determine the attitude of ED patients with minor problems to being treated by an NP. ⋯ A majority of ED patients with minor problems accepted being treated by an NP, often without additional physician assessment. Several factors, including impact on ED staffing and patient flow, logistics, cost and quality of care should be evaluated before implementing such strategies.