Knowledge and attitude of visitor on triage system in emergency room at Patan Hospital, Nepal

Abstract

Introduction: Though triage is a crucial part of every modern emergency room, it is not well informed to patient parties which sometimes create a problem. Emergency triage is the process by which patient is classified according to the type and urgency of their conditions to get the right patient to the right place at the right time with the right care provider. It effectively reduces the manpower in the resource poor settings like ours and helps to decrease the crowd. The most important part of it is it helps to identify sick patient early with prompt initiation of adequate management, thus decreasing mortality and morbidity of the patients. Contrary to its importance, its knowledge to visitors is very low.

Method: It is a cross-sectional descriptive study carried out in Patan Hospital Emergency Room for two and half month’s duration. The sample size is 384 participants. It is a self structured questionnaire study done on patient parties who met the inclusion criteria. Stratified random sampling was carried out by dividing participants into three strata viz. morning, evening and night shifts.

Results: Total 384 participants were given self structured knowledge and attitude questions and descriptive analysis done using SPSS-17. There seems to be a fair association between the correct answers and the different variables used. Education level of the participants, age, address, religion and previous visit to emergency room have positive association with the knowledge and attitude of the participants about triage.

Conclusion: The knowledge and attitude of the visitor about triage is fairly good contrary to assumption probably due to limitations. In spite of the importance of the triage, we have done too little to educate about triage and its importance to the patient parties.