Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician

• Sponsor: University Hospital, Geneva (Other)
• Overall Status: Completed
• CT.gov ID: NCT02980159
• Collaborator: (none)
• Enrollment: 69,893
• Location: 1
• Duration (Months): 7
• Patients Per Site Per Month: 10034.8

Study Details

Study Description

Brief Summary

Due to an increasing number of patients admitted in emergency departments, many patients cannot be evaluated immediately after their admission. The function of "triage liaison physician" was introduced in Spring 2015. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of this new function on patients' flow in the ED.

Condition or Disease	Intervention/Treatment	Phase
Emergencies; Triage	Other: Triage liaison physician

Detailed Description

Geneva University Hospitals (GUH) emergency department (ED) admits more than 64000 patients every year. These patients are triaged using the Swiss Emergency Triage Scale (SETS), a 4-level triage scale. The SETS imposes time objectives until the first medical evaluation (20 minutes for SETS 2, 2 hours for SETS 3). In 2014, only 60% of level-2 and 63% of level-3 emergencies were evaluated within 20 and 120 minutes respectively.

A triage liaison physician was introduced in Spring 2015 with the mission to help triage nurse in their decisions and to evaluate quickly the patients that cannot be immediately installed in an ED evaluation room.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the triage liaison physician on the times to first medical evaluation.

Study Design

• Study Type: Observational
• Actual Enrollment: 69893 participants
• Observational Model: Cohort
• Time Perspective: Retrospective
• Official Title: Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician on the Time to First Medical Evaluation in the Emergency Departement
• Study Start Date: Nov 1, 2016
• Actual Primary Completion Date: Jun 1, 2017
• Actual Study Completion Date: Jun 1, 2017

Arms and Interventions

Arm	Intervention/Treatment
Before triage liaison physician All patients admitted before the introduction of the function of triage liaison physician.
After triage liaison physician All patients admitted after the introduction of the function of triage liaison physician.	Other: Triage liaison physician; A triage liaison physician is present from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm, Monday to Friday, with the mission to evaluate quickly patients who cannot be immediately installed in an ED room

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcome Measures

1. Proportion of patients evaluated within SETS objectives [Within 120 minutes after ED triage]

   Proportion of patients evaluated within time objective as defined by SETS standards.

Secondary Outcome Measures

1. Time to first medical contact [Within 24 hours after ED triage]

   Time elapsed between triage and first medical evaluation

Eligibility Criteria

Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 Years and Older
• Sexes Eligible for Study: All
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Inclusion Criteria:

• = 16 y

• admitted in GUH ED

Exclusion Criteria:

• patients triaged to outpatient clinics

Contacts and Locations

Locations

	Site	City	State	Country	Postal Code
1	Geneva University Hospitals, ED	Geneva		Switzerland	1211

Sponsors and Collaborators

• University Hospital, Geneva

Investigators

• Principal Investigator: Olivier T Rutschmann, MD, MPH, University Hospital, Geneva

Study Documents (Full-Text)

None provided.

More Information

Publications

None provided.

• Responsible Party: Olivier T. Rutschmann, Professor, Chief deputy, University Hospital, Geneva
• ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02980159
• Other Study ID Numbers: CCER 2016-00179
• First Posted: Dec 2, 2016
• Last Update Posted: Jul 27, 2017
• Last Verified: Jul 1, 2017

• Individual Participant Data (IPD) Sharing Statement: No
• Plan to Share IPD: No
• Additional relevant MeSH terms: Emergencies

Study Results

No Results Posted as of Jul 27, 2017