Emergency department triage and COVID‐19: Performance of the Interagency Integrated Triage Tool during a pandemic surge in Papua New Guinea

Objective To determine the sensitivity of the Interagency Integrated Triage Tool to identify severe and critical illness among adult patients with COVID‐19. Methods A retrospective observational study conducted at Port Moresby General Hospital ED during a three‐month Delta surge. Results Among 387 e...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emergency medicine Australasia 2022-10, Vol.34 (5), p.822-824
Main Authors: Mitchell, Rob, Kingston, Carl, Tefatu, Rayleen, Bornstein, Sarah, Kendino, Mangu, Sengiromo, Duncan, Pole, Jasper, Kuk, Sylvia, Josaiah, Betty, Elton, Leigh, Banks, Colin, Körver, Sarah, Cameron, Peter, O'Reilly, Gerard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
COVID‐19
emergency care
Papua New Guinea
Short Report
Short Reports
triage
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Objective To determine the sensitivity of the Interagency Integrated Triage Tool to identify severe and critical illness among adult patients with COVID‐19. Methods A retrospective observational study conducted at Port Moresby General Hospital ED during a three‐month Delta surge. Results Among 387 eligible patients with COVID‐19, 63 were diagnosed with severe or critical illness. Forty‐seven were allocated a high acuity triage category, equating to a sensitivity of 74.6% (95% CI 62.1–84.7) and a negative predictive value of 92.7% (95% CI 88.4–95.8). Conclusion In a resource‐constrained context, the tool demonstrated reasonable sensitivity to detect severe and critical COVID‐19, comparable with its reported performance for other urgent conditions.
ISSN:1742-6731
1742-6723
DOI:10.1111/1742-6723.13980