Triage Drift: A Workplace Study in a Pediatric Emergency Department

This paper presents a workplace study of triage work practices within an emergency
department (ED). We examine the practices, procedures, and organization in which ED staff uses
tools and technologies when coordinating the essential activity of assessing and sorting patients
arriving at the ED. The paper provides in-depth empirical observations describing the situated work
practices of triage work, and the complex collaborative nature of the triage process. We identify and
conceptualize triage work practices as comprising patient trajectories, triage nurse activities,
coordinative artefacts and exception handling; we also articulate how these four features of triage
practices constitute and connect workflows, organize and re-organize time and space during the
triage process. Finally we conceptualize these connections as an assessing and sorting mechanism
in collaborative work. We argue that the complexities involved in this mechanism are a necessary
asset of triage work, which calls for a reassessment of the concept of triage drift.
Udgivelsesdato: Aug 2008