Can J Emerg Med
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Comparative Study
Reliability of the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale: interrater and intrarater agreement from a community and an academic emergency department.
The Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) is a five-level triage tool that is used to help prioritize the order in which emergency department (ED) patients should be seen. The objectives of this study were to determine the interrater and intrarater agreement of the 2008 CTAS guideline revisions by triage nurses and to compare agreement between triage nurses working in a small community ED and an academic ED. ⋯ The reliability of CTAS scoring by academic and community ED nurses was relatively good; however, the application of the 2008 CTAS revisions appears less reliable than the 2004 CTAS guidelines. These results may be useful to develop educational materials to strengthen reliability and validity for triage scoring using the 2008 CTAS guideline revisions.
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Frequent emergency department (ED) users are inconsistently defined and poorly studied in Canada. The purpose of this study was to develop uniform definitions, quantify ED burden, and characterize adult frequent users of a suburban community ED. ⋯ We propose reproducible definitions for adult frequent and extreme frequent ED users and provide information on the characteristics and burden of care of these groups at a community Canadian suburban ED. Adoption of these definitions would allow comparison across centres in future research and facilitate targeted interventions for frequent and extreme frequent ED users.