The following is a summary of “Cognitive biases regarding utilization of emergency severity index among emergency nurses,” published in the November 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Essa, et al.

For a study, researchers sought to discover how common cognitive errors are among emergency nurses when using the Emergency Severity Index (ESI). They also wanted to find out how cognitive errors and socioeconomic factors are different. The Emergency Severity Index (ESI) helps nurses decide the most important cases. Cognitive flaws could make it harder for nurses in screening to make good nursing choices. Because of this, it’s harder to give safe, high-quality care to patients. 208 emergency nurses from four tertiary care hospitals were asked to participate in a cross-sectional analysis. 

The institutional review board gave its okay, and the heads of the institutions gave their clearance. Before any data was collected, informed permission was obtained. An organized scenario-based assessment was used to discover cognitive biases at the five stages of ESI. SPSS v25.0 was used to get both descriptive and inferential data. 56.2% of the nurses who answered (86.6% of those who did) were men. 62.90% had diplomas in nursing. From level one to level five of the ESI, cognitive errors were found in 51% of nurses, then 45%, then 90%, then 89%, and 91%. 

From level one to level five, in order, premature closure was 22%, tolerance to risk was 12%, satisfying bias was 25%, frame effect was 22%, and blind following was 34%. People who are male, have between two and five years of experience, are qualified as general nurses, and don’t have emergency severity index licensing were found to be more likely to make biased choices when making triage decisions. There are a lot of cognitive flaws that emergency nurses use when deciding which patients to take care of first. Cognitive de-biasing techniques can help nurses make better screening choices, which could lead to better care and patient safety.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675723004394