Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician

Impact of a Triage Liaison Physician on the Time to First Medical Evaluation in the Emergency Departement

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT02980159

Enrollment

69893

Registered

2016-12-02

Start date

2016-11-30

Completion date

2017-06-30

Last updated

2017-07-27

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Emergencies, Triage

Brief summary

Due to an increasing number of patients admitted in emergency departments, many patients cannot be evaluated immediately after their admission. The function of triage liaison physician was introduced in Spring 2015. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of this new function on patients' flow in the ED.

Detailed description

Geneva University Hospitals (GUH) emergency department (ED) admits more than 64000 patients every year. These patients are triaged using the Swiss Emergency Triage Scale (SETS), a 4-level triage scale. The SETS imposes time objectives until the first medical evaluation (20 minutes for SETS 2, 2 hours for SETS 3). In 2014, only 60% of level-2 and 63% of level-3 emergencies were evaluated within 20 and 120 minutes respectively. A triage liaison physician was introduced in Spring 2015 with the mission to help triage nurse in their decisions and to evaluate quickly the patients that cannot be immediately installed in an ED evaluation room. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of the triage liaison physician on the times to first medical evaluation.

Interventions

OTHERTriage liaison physician

A triage liaison physician is present from 7:30 am to 10:30 pm, Monday to Friday, with the mission to evaluate quickly patients who cannot be immediately installed in an ED room

Study design

Observational model

COHORT

Time perspective

RETROSPECTIVE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

16 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* \>= 16 y * admitted in GUH ED

Exclusion criteria

* patients triaged to outpatient clinics

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Proportion of patients evaluated within SETS objectives	Within 120 minutes after ED triage	Proportion of patients evaluated within time objective as defined by SETS standards.

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Time to first medical contact	Within 24 hours after ED triage	Time elapsed between triage and first medical evaluation

Countries

Switzerland

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026