Assessment of the patients’ outcomes after implementation of South African triage scale in emergency department, Egypt

PURPOSE: Overcrowding in emergency department (ED) is a concerning global problem and has been identified as a national crisis in some countries. Several emergency sorting systems designed successfully in the world. Launched in 2004, a group of branches in South African triage scale (SATS) developed. The effectiveness of the case sorting system of SATS was evaluated to reduce the patient's length of stay (LOS) and mortality rate within the ED at Suez Canal University Hospital. METHODS: The study was designed as an intervention study that included a systematic random sample of patients who presented to the ED in Suez Canal University Hospital. This study was implemented in three phases: pre-intervention phase, 115 patients were assessed by the traditional protocols; intervention phase, a structured training program was provided to the ED staff, including a workshop and lectures; and post-intervention phase, 230 patients were assessed by SATS. All the patients were retriaged 2 h later, calculating the LOS per patient and the mortality. Data was collected and entered using Microsoft Excel software. Collected data from the triage sheet were analyzed using the SPSS software program version 22.0. RESULTS: The LOS in the ED was about 183.78 min before the intervention; while after the training program and the application of SATS, it was reduced to 51.39 min. About 15.7% of the patients died before the intervention; however, after the intervention the ratio decreased to 10.7% deaths. CONCLUSION: SATS is better at assessing patients without missing important data. Additionally, it resulted in a decrease in the LOS and reduction in the mortality rate compared to the traditional protocol.