Knowledge of triage in the senior medical students in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Triage is a response to the problem of overcrowdingin Emergency Departments (EDs) and accuracy of decisions madeby the triage unit affects the ultimate outcome of EDs. This studywas conducted to evaluate the knowledge of triage among lastyear medical students in Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytical study whose subjectswere all the senior students of medicine (62) in the last year ofmedicine from January to June 2013 who attended emergencymedicine course in the screen room of 2 University Hospitals. Thisquestionnaire was designed in 3 sections including personal data,15 questions on knowledge of triage and 10 case scenarios fortriage decision making and completed by the students. Statisticalanalysis was performed in SPSS statistical software (version 14)using independent sample t-test, one way ANOVA, and Pearsoncorrelation coefficient (p≤0.001).Results: The total mean score of the participants was 10.6±1.5,ranging from 7 to 13. 58(93.5%) students had poor triageknowledge. In the scenario’s section, the percentage of correcttriage by students was 49.2% and those of over and under triagewere 28.1% and 22.7%, respectively. There was a significantrelationship between the triage accuracy and level of triage (ESI4) (p≤0.001).Conclusion: The level of knowledge of triage in the last yearmedical students was poor, although most of them had passeda course in the screen room. It is recommended that medicalstudents’ educational courses should include sections on theknowledge of triage in emergency rooms.Keywords: Emergency; Triage; Medical students