Triage Fundamentals #10: Chest Pain Presentations

Course overview

The sorting process for patients seeking emergency care services has taken a front row seat in the arena of managing risk for both the ED and Urgent Care settings. The process of triage directly impacts patient outcomes, patient/family perceptions of quality care, the internal patient flow of the department, and staff satisfaction. Lack of a foundational knowledge of triage is an underlying element that pushes the risk level even higher. In this course, we cover risk reduction related to knowledge and recognition of red flags by the triage nurse. The focus is on complaints related to the chest, including acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and pulmonary-related events, providing relevant statistics and demonstrating how each area applies to triage. After completing this activity, practitioners should be able to: examine three red flags for complaints related to the chest from both a cardiac and a pulmonary perspective; examine two physiological factors that relate to the red flags for complaints related to the chest; and compare examples of a Level 2 and a Level 3 triage in patients with chest-related or pulmonary.