The new emergency department “Tuscan triage System”. Validation study

Introduction: A new organizational framework was recently implemented in Tuscan Emergency Departments (EDs), including specific low-priority streaming. A new ED triage system, named “Tuscan Triage System” (TTS), was devised with the purpose of applying this reorganization. Methods: A validation study was designed with the primary aims of assessing the content, face, and criterion validities, and the inter-rater reliability of the TTS. The secondary aim was to estimate the differences in triage level assignation between the previous “Regional Triage System” (RTS) and the TTS. Twenty-four nurses trained for the TTS were enrolled to assign TTS priority levels to 100 triage clinical case vignettes drawn up by the developers of the TTS (reference standard). Results: The Content Validity Index – Scale/Average (S-CVI/Ave) of TTS was 0.98. Concerning to face validity, the S-CVI/Ave was 1. The highest adherence of triage level assignation to the reference standard was for levels 1 and 2. The Krippendorff α value was 0.808. Undertriage and overtriage were 10.45% and 14.29%, respectively. Overall, the comparation between RTS and TTS showed a marked shift of level assignation towards TTS low priority levels. Conclusions: The TTS seems to be safe. These results should be confirmed through studies in the real clinical settings.