ANGELES UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION

Mac Arthur Highway, 2009 Angeles City, Philippines COLLEGE OF NURSING A.Y 2012-2013

Undertriaged Elders Might Appear Ignored in Chart

Journal Reading IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS IN RELATED LEARNING EXPERIENCES

PRESENTED BY: LETRAN, RACHELLE ANNE S. GROUP 2 PRESENTED TO: DENNISO JOSE C. PUNSALAN RN, MN (CLINICAL INSTRUCTOR)

PRESENTED ON: FEBRUARY 4, 2013

SUMARRY In a study conducted at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, the researcher found that 22.5% of the elderly patients are undertriaged. Any complaint of an older patient should be taken seriously as suggested by the researchers because of their advancing age. Even the benign symptom of an older patient maybe life threatening or may be interpreted incorrectly. For example, if the patient is hypertensive and upon arrival to the emergency department (ED) his/her blood pressure is dropping, the emergency personnel (EP) may get a normal BP not knowing of the patients condition. They also suggested that patient ages 65 or 70 and above should fall under urgent category or have a red flag like newborns. If the EP recognized that there are no alarming symptoms or signs, a layperson may perceive it as a form of negligence. It may be unavoidable if this patient dies but no one would accept that. If the patient dies before being seen, the presumption within the legal system will be that the patients life could have been saved if they had a more timely evaluation and this puts the EP or nurse to a difficult situation. Common claims that are regularly seen involving older patients are alleging failure to recognize, missed diagnosis, inappropriate discharge, failure to refer, and failure to treat. In some of these cases, documentation is not enough to defend yourself.

REACTION Extremes of ages are patients who are at greater risk for complications and mortality. Failure to recognize their complaint may compromise their health. Older patients are patients who are difficult to assess because they may suffer from a lot of diseases. Sometimes their complaints and sign are misinterpreted and not given appropriate management. This may lead to law suits for the EP and the management of the hospital.

RECOMMENDATION After reading and understanding the content of the article, I recommend to the hospital management to train nurses and triage personnel on proper triage of patients and consider patients older than 65 or 70 years old as urgent. Also, they may use less subjective triage methods in emergency departments. I recommend to the nursing profession to emphasize the concept of emergency nursing to student nurses. To the public, address all symptoms even minute details to the EP to correctly triage their condition. SOURCE EBSCOHOST http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=8ce7ca0c-3536-4a04-97a7acf45da4e3a2%40sessionmgr114&vid=2&hid=110