Rozina Aziz Triage nurses are essential for helping healthcare facilities manage urgent and life-threatening medical scenarios. Triage nurses are responsible for making sure that patients receive the right care in order to be healthy and happy. To learn more about this job, you can research triage nurses and decide if it’s a career option you would like to pursue.
This article details the role and responsibilities of a triage nurse, offers insight into potential salary expectations, and outlines the five-step process of becoming one.
What is Triage Nurse?
A triage nurse is an RN (Registered Nurse) who has received additional training to assess patients and determine their care needs. They play a crucial role in easing patients’ movement through any hospital’s emergency room.
They improve patients’ health while cutting down on wait times, which boosts the department’s efficiency. Regarding patients’ satisfaction and well-being, it’s the triage nurses’ job to ensure they get the proper treatment at the right time.
Where can you find nurses who specialize in providing triage care?
Skilled triage nurses are in need in various healthcare settings where patients require close attention. All facilities that provide immediate medical attention, such as hospitals, urgent care centers, trauma centers, doctors’ offices, outpatient clinics, poison control centers, and so on, are included here.
Telehealth nurses typically staff triage helplines or other telephone triage service centers from remote locations. Due to the nature of their employment, nurses who specialize in triage and telephone triage often work overnights, weekends, and holidays.
Triage Nurses are responsible for:
- Conducting a thorough physical examination and interview of all newly admitted emergency room patients
- Check up with patients waiting for care regularly to reevaluate their conditions.
- Assess patients according to a predetermined set of criteria to decide where they should be placed in the admissions queue, how urgent their requirements are, and what kind of care they require, and which doctors need to be consulted.
- If the patient’s situation is critical, you should begin treatment immediately while waiting for medical personnel. The role of the triage nurse typically does not involve direct patient care.
- Responsible for overseeing patients in the waiting room and keeping doctors informed on their progress.
- Minimize patient wait times by streamlining the waiting room queue system.
- Patient treatment must be coordinated with various services and locations, including transportation.
- Telehealth nurses, often known as telephone triage nurses (TTNs), perform similar but distinct duties, including the following: • Providing patients with assistance via online means (e.g., video chat, online messaging, or telephone calls).
- Checking in on the health of a patient. To compensate for the lack of a physical examination, these nurses must become specialists at eliciting all relevant information through skillful questioning, even while the patient is in distress.
- Reading medical records and patient notes from a centralized database. Rural communities and those with lower incomes often have more difficulty affording medical care. Therefore these centers serve an essential need.
- It entails performing in-depth analyses and precise diagnoses.
- After gathering as much information as possible from the patient and directing them to the best available care, they may advise the patient to visit an emergency room, make an appointment with a doctor, or attempt self-care.
- Helping hospitals and clinics care for fewer people at once decrease wait times.
The primary responsibility of a Triage Nurse is to provide emergency care to nurses whose conditions are considered life-threatening. They provide medical advice and handle patient calls in some hospitals.
Eligibility Criteria for a Triage Nurse
A Triage Nurse is a highly qualified registered nurse with extensive experience working in urgent care environments. They should take a course on triage, so they are ready for the challenges of their job. Nurses who work in triage situations need to be able to multitask and make choices with minimal data.
Core skills required
- Possessing robust evaluation and problem-solving skills;
- Working well under pressure;
- Thinking and acting quickly in clinical settings;
- Establishing and maintaining healthy emotional boundaries;
- Thinking critically about complex problems
How To Become A Triage Nurse?
Graduate from a nursing program
To work as a triage nurse, you must first become licensed as a registered nurse (RN). How much time and money you are willing to put into your college degree will determine which path is best for you. You should have completed 12 years of schooling before applying. Your journey to becoming a registered nurse can go one of three ways:
An Associate’s Degree in Nursing
It’s up to you whether you want to get an Associate of Science in Nursing, an Associate of Applied Science in Nursing, or an Associate of Science in Nursing (AASN). Having this information beforehand helps the hospital’s triage nurses and other personnel prepare for a patient’s arrival.
Get in touch with vocational schools and community colleges in your area to discover a nursing program that meets your needs; you might even be able to find an online course provider. The curriculum of this introductory-level certification provides students with the abilities and understanding necessary to look after patients, perform nursing services, and become familiar with biology concepts relevant to nursing. Math, social science, and problem-solving abilities can all benefit from exposure to the liberal arts.
An Undergraduate Nursing Degree
This intensive, four-year program of study leads to a degree more advanced than an associate’s. Community nursing, psychology, pharmacology, emergency nursing, research methods, health assessment, nutrition, and specialized topics like pediatrics are all covered in depth in the classroom.
Students in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program receive comprehensive training in theory and practice. They are taught within a framework established by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
Short-Term Nursing Education Program
Suppose you already hold a bachelor’s degree in another program. In that case, you may qualify for admission to a fast-paced Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program that can be completed in as little as 11 months.
To be admitted to the ABSN program, you must have obtained 54 transferable college credits in the past five years and maintained a 3.0 GPA or higher in your initial bachelor’s degree. Relevant fields of study include biology and other health-related disciplines.
Acquire a license
To work in a triage practice, a nurse must have a license in every state. To become a registered nurse in the United States, you need to take and pass the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN), which is mandated by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).
Here is your chance to demonstrate that you have what it takes to be an RN in the real world. You have six hours to use a computer to complete multiple-choice questions. Please check with the medical board in your state for specific requirements, as these will differ from one license to the next. Every jurisdiction mandates periodic license renewal and CEU completion.
Get your required documents organized.
To work as a registered nurse after passing the NCLEX-RN and receiving your license, you must first locate a job in the field. You may find work as a triage nurse right away, despite the fact that most people in this role have years of experience in the field.
Now that you have your RN license, it’s time to submit your CV and cover letter and begin applying for jobs. Nursing staffing agencies, trade magazines, and the World Wide Web are all excellent places to start your search.
The most significant way to increase the likelihood of an interview is to adapt your resume and cover letter for each position you apply for. Do not forget to list your clinical experience and relevant qualifications. When feasible, show off your skills by achieving concrete goals.
What Are The Skills For A Triage Nurse?
As a triage nurse, you will need to learn to perform effectively under pressure as you gain experience. Nurses who work in triage situations require a set of specialized core competencies and skills in addition to those required of an RN.
Proficient communication
Fast and thorough data collection is essential for triage nurses. It’s possible you won’t have much time to ask the pertinent questions you need to before the patient loses consciousness or is too drugged to respond.
Questions asked during a phone triage call are meant to substitute a physical examination. To get the correct response from the patient, you need to convey your questions clearly, and in a way they can understand.
Conscious listening
You’ll be doing your job in a hectic, noisy place. Regardless, you need to be able to listen carefully to what the patient and other staff members have to say and process the information carefully to grasp its meaning. Telephone triage nurses, who cannot rely on physical observations, can significantly benefit from developing this competence.
Talents in evaluating situations and developing solutions
A patient’s level of critical care can be determined by their responses and your examination of their physical condition. You can’t afford to miss anything, and you also need to be able to make a diagnosis even when critical pieces of data are missing, or the patient is unconscious.
Analysis and quick thinking
Your capacity to think clearly and rationally under duress is crucial to the health of your patients. You’ll need to think swiftly on your feet and accurately utilize your nursing expertise in this situation.
Competence in making decisions
After conducting a thorough evaluation of the patient, you will need to determine the most appropriate course of treatment. Under pressure, a correct and timely judgment in the patient’s best interest may be required.
Acquire Credentials on Your Own Time
There is presently no dedicated triage nursing credential available. But since most triage nurses are found in emergency departments, the Ambulatory Care Nurse credential is something you should look into. Your expertise in emergency care will be recognized with this credential from the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing.
In order to pursue a career in ambulatory care, it’s necessary to have 2000 hours of clinical experience and demonstrate the required knowledge and skills.
What Does the Future Hold for Triage Nursing Technology?
The employment of automated systems is a growing trend in the field of triage nursing. Self-service kiosks like the ones provided by Be Well, called WellPoints, can be used to measure vitals, including a patient’s weight, blood pressure, and oxygen levels, and then upload that data to the patient’s electronic medical record.
The ESI, or Emergency Severity Index, is yet another noteworthy development. This index is an electronic triage instrument that helps triage nurses rate patients’ conditions on a scale from 1 to 5.
Further growing development in triage nursing is the use of patient flow software. The electronic patient tracking systems that keep tabs on hospital beds were developed with the help of this program. This can help get a patient out of the ED and on their way faster.
The idea of a digital check-in is the fourth significant development. One such app is iTriage, which allows users to find nearby urgent care facilities with minimal wait times quickly. The patient can fill out an online registration form when the appropriate one is located. This information beforehand helps the hospital’s triage nurses and other personnel prepare for a patient’s arrival.
In an emergency care setting, a nurse’s ability to perform targeted evaluations and prioritize a patient’s clinical status is crucial. There is a life-saving function involved.
In Conclusion
Triage nursing is a vital role in emergency care settings. It requires quick thinking, decision-making skills, and the ability to prioritize patient care. To become a triage nurse, one must acquire credentials from the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing and have 2000 hours of clinical experience. Technology is also playing an increasingly important role in triage nursing with the use of automated systems, self-service kiosks, the Emergency Severity Index (ESI), patient flow software, and digital check-in apps. With these tools and qualifications, triage nurses can provide life-saving care to patients in need.
