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Investigating the predictive validity of an emergency department mental health triage tool
Author(s) -
Sands Natisha,
Elsom Stephen,
Berk Michael,
Hosking Jennifer,
Prematunga Roshani,
Gerdtz Marie
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
nursing and health sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.563
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1442-2018
pISSN - 1441-0745
DOI - 10.1111/nhs.12095
Subject(s) - triage , mental health , emergency department , medicine , predictive validity , categorization , medical emergency , psychiatry , clinical psychology , philosophy , epistemology
Emergency department mental health triage is a complex clinical task for which the evidence base is minimal. Research in the past decade has consistently identified issues associated with the accuracy and consistency of mental health triage assessment. In this study, we investigated the predictive validity of the clinical descriptors in the V ictorian E mergency D epartment M ental H ealth T riage T ool. Using a naturalistic, retrospective study design, an audit of the emergency department triage database was undertaken on 12 months of continuous data for all mental health presentations ( n = 1718). The main outcome measure was urgency categorization. The study findings indicate that triage nurses can accurately identify the urgency of mental health presentations using defined clinical criteria. A significant finding was that patients with acute psychotic symptoms were more likely to be triaged as high urgency (code 2); however, the A ustralasian T riage S cale, in use in all A ustralian and many international emergency departments, provides no mental health‐specific descriptors in high‐urgency categories (1 and 2).