Discriminators

So, if a patient comes in and they have injured their ankle, they are non-weight bearing and they are claiming to have... Or, their pain is 10 out of 10. They are in significant pain, as well. How would you enter that on to the triage screen?

Okay. So, patient has come in with an injury. We would select trauma, musculoskeletal. We would get some description of... You say it was the ankle?

Yeah.

Okay. So, select, ankle. We do our triage details and then we would select from the presenting complaint. Always good to understand how they have come by the trauma as well. So, we would go for, limb problem. There we go. Limb problem. And you say they are saying their pain is 10 out to 10?

Yeah.

Okay. So, we would, then, select, significant pain. They said 10 out to 10, okay. And, that is straight away populating the triage category as very urgent. Based on their pain score descriptor, we would send this patient around to majors because they would probably need some IV analgesia. I would ring them first to make sure they have got some space available.

Okay. There are two more boxes under there. What are they for?

Triage category. So, this is, if we believe... Well, pain is subjective. If patient was coming in describing pain as 10 out of 10 but was weight-bearing, had not taken any pain relief, etcetera, and describing the pain as 10 out of 10, then it may be that the patient does not meet the category for very urgent and you could then select, urgent, if you thought they needed to go on to the ambulatory area. However, it is always best to go with the category that has been selected, speak to the appropriate receiving area and get some advice before downgrading.

Okay. And then, there is one for the pathway, I believe. Underneath there for the treatment area.

Treatment area, that is where we will then select them. So, if the first patient was very urgent, we would send this patient around to the majors areas, so we would select majors from there and send them around to the appropriate area.

Okay.

Also, works for illness as well, Mark. It is not just for an injury. So, if we find a patient who has got an illness and we select triage... Okay. So, let us say, for example, patient has come in with a genitourinary problem. Let us say they have got a little bit of pain on passing urine. We will select that, okay? And we will select from that, urinary symptoms. And then we need to scroll down and come across the first discriminator that they are describing. But there is no shock, they are not surprised, describing severe pain.

And there are colors that correspond to the problem that they have got.

Yeah. And this again, will determine how quick this patient needs to be seen. So, they are describing some difficulty passing urine. So, we will select that. We will ask them about their pain. They are describing the pain as four out of 10, and that is suggesting that patient is urgent so, we can consider sending that patient around to the appropriate area again.

Okay.