Purpose: In the emergency department (ED), triage significantly impacts patient safety. Therefore, triage nurses must make decisions accurately and timeously. This study aims to investigate how South Korean pediatric emergency nurses perceive urgency and classify severity using the Q methodology, which examines individuals' subjectivity. Methods: We collected 84 statements from a Q population based on a literature review and interviews and selected 33 Q samples. The P samples included 30 pediatric emergency nurses at a Seoul tertiary care hospital. The principal component factor analysis method was used to analyze data using the PC-QUANL program. Results: Four urgency perception types were identified among pediatric ED nursesdType 1: “Experiential coping”; Type 2: “Careful reasoning”; Type 3: “Patient-centered thinking”; and Type 4: “Intuitive prediction.” These types appear to be an integrated process of knowledge and clinical experience that considers children's characteristics and developmental stages. Conclusion This study may serve as a basis for future education to improve pediatric ED nurses 0 urgency judgment and severity classification skills.

Purpose: In the emergency department (ED), triage significantly impacts patient safety. Therefore, triage nurses must make decisions accurately and timeously. This study aims to investigate how South Korean pediatric emergency nurses perceive urgency and classify severity using the Q methodology, which examines individuals' subjectivity. Methods: We collected 84 statements from a Q population based on a literature review and interviews and selected 33 Q samples. The P samples included 30 pediatric emergency nurses at a Seoul tertiary care hospital. The principal component factor analysis method was used to analyze data using the PC-QUANL program. Results: Four urgency perception types were identified among pediatric ED nursesdType 1: “Experiential coping”; Type 2: “Careful reasoning”; Type 3: “Patient-centered thinking”; and Type 4: “Intuitive prediction.” These types appear to be an integrated process of knowledge and clinical experience that considers children's characteristics and developmental stages. Conclusion This study may serve as a basis for future education to improve pediatric ED nurses 0 urgency judgment and severity classification skills.

Purpose: In the emergency department (ED), triage significantly impacts patient safety. Therefore, triage nurses must make decisions accurately and timeously. This study aims to investigate how South Korean pediatric emergency nurses perceive urgency and classify severity using the Q methodology, which examines individuals' subjectivity. Methods: We collected 84 statements from a Q population based on a literature review and interviews and selected 33 Q samples. The P samples included 30 pediatric emergency nurses at a Seoul tertiary care hospital. The principal component factor analysis method was used to analyze data using the PC-QUANL program. Results: Four urgency perception types were identified among pediatric ED nursesdType 1: “Experiential coping”; Type 2: “Careful reasoning”; Type 3: “Patient-centered thinking”; and Type 4: “Intuitive prediction.” These types appear to be an integrated process of knowledge and clinical experience that considers children's characteristics and developmental stages. Conclusion This study may serve as a basis for future education to improve pediatric ED nurses 0 urgency judgment and severity classification skills.

Background/Aims: The quick Sepsis-related Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) is a newly developed risk stratification tool, which has been presented along with a new sepsis definition, to classify infected patients outside of the intensive care unit (ICU). We evaluated the clinical usefulness of qSOFA for predicting adverse outcomes in sepsis patients with liver cirrhosis. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study to assess the utility of qSOFA in sepsis patients with liver cirrhosis for whom medical emergency teams (METs) were activated in general wards at an academic tertiary care hospital between March 2008 and December 2015. qSOFA, Systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), modified early warning score (MEWS), and sequential (sepsis- related) organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores were calculated according to data at MET activation. Results: Of 188 patients, 69 (36.7%) had a qSOFA score of 0 or 1 point and 119 (63.3%) had ≥ 2 points. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) for ICU transfer on the SOFA (AUROC, 0.691; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.615 to 0.767) or MEWS (AUROC, 0.663; 95% CI, 0.586 to 0.739) were significantly higher compared to those for qSOFA (AUROC, 0.589; 95% CI, 0.507 to 0.671) or SIRS (AUROC, 0.533; 95% CI, 0.451 to 0.616). Conclusions Our findings suggest that qSOFA score may have limited utility in predicting adverse outcomes in sepsis patients with liver cirrhosis at MET activation. Either MEWS or another screening tool is needed for detecting early sepsis in these patients.