Can J Emerg Med
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Physician workload and the Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale: the Predictors of Workload in the Emergency Room (POWER) Study.
The Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) is a 5-level triage tool used to determine the priority by which patients should be treated in Canadian emergency departments (EDs). To determine emergency physician (EP) workload and staffing needs, many hospitals in Ontario use a case-mix formula based solely on patient volume at each triage level. The purpose of our study was to describe the distribution of EP time by activity during a shift in order to estimate the amount of time required by an EP to assess and treat patients in each triage category and to determine the variability in the distribution of CTAS scoring between hospital sites. ⋯ In our study, EPs had very limited downtime. There was significant variability in the distribution of CTAS scores between sites and also marked variation in EP time related to each triage category. This brings into question the appropriateness of using CTAS alone to determine physician staffing levels in EDs.