Vital signs for children at triage : a multicentre validation of the revised South African Triage Scale (SATS) for children
Date
2013-03-22
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Health & Medical Publishing Group
Abstract
Objective. To validate a revised version of the paediatric South African Triage Scale (SATS) against admission as a reference standard
and compare the sensitivity of triage using: (i) clinical discriminators; (ii) an age-appropriate physiological composite score; and (iii) a
combination of both.
Methods. A prospective cohort study was undertaken validating the revised paediatric SATS against outcome markers of children at six
emergency centres during a 2-month period in 2011. The primary outcome marker was the proportion of children admitted. Validity
indicators including sensitivity (Se), specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value (NPV) were used to estimate the
validity. Associated percentages for over-/under-triage were used to further assess practical application of the paediatric SATS.
Results. A total of 2 014 children were included. The percentage of hospital admissions increased with an increase in the level of urgency
from 5% in the non-urgent patients to 73% in the emergency patients. The data demonstrated that sensitivity increased substantially when
using the SATS, which is a combination of clinical discriminators and the Triage Early Warning Score (TEWS) (Se 91.0%, NPV 95.3%),
compared with use of clinical discriminators in isolation (Se 57.1%, NPV 86.3%) or the TEWS in isolation (Se 75.6%, NPV 89.1%).
Conclusion. The results of this study illustrate that the revised paediatric SATS is a safe and robust triage tool.
Description
CITATION: Twomey, M. et al. 2013. Vital signs for children at triage : a multicentre validation of the revised South African Triage Scale (SATS) for children. South African Medical Journal, 103(5):304-308, doi:10.7196/SAMJ.6877.
The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.za
The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.za
Keywords
Hospitals -- Emergency services, Emergency medical services, Triage (Medicine), Paediatrics, Vital signs
Citation
Twomey, M. et al. 2013. Vital signs for children at triage : a multicentre validation of the revised South African Triage Scale (SATS) for children. South African Medical Journal, 103(5):304-308, doi:10.7196/SAMJ.6877.