Triage of acute medical patients - interobserver Reliability

Background In most emergency departments (ED) around the world, patients are initially assessed using a triage system or risk stratification tools. The result of the scores is an important factor in determining the course of treatment for critically ill patients. Several different systems are used, but most include blood pressure, respiratory rate, pulse, and level of consciousness and the individual systems then have a number of different parameters. Considering the vital role the results of these scores have on the course of treatment, the number of studies on inter-observer reliability is limited. The aim of this study was to measure the inter-observer variability when assessing patients using the Danish Emergency Process Triage (DEPT) (using only vital signs), the Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS), the HOTEL score, the Simple Clinical Score (SCS) and PARIS score.