Analysis of Factors Influencing Emergency Department Nurses' Triage Decision-Making for Patients with Suspected Infectious Diseases

Abstract

The emergency department serves as a critical frontline for identifying and isolating patients with suspected infectious diseases and for controlling and preventing nosocomial infections. The accuracy and timeliness of triage decisions directly impact patient safety, public health risks, and the effective allocation of medical resources. This study aims to systematically analyze the multidimensional factors influencing emergency department nurses’ triage decisions regarding patients with suspected infectious diseases. The analysis indicates that the decision-making process is profoundly shaped by internal factors related to nurses’ individual cognitive foundations, knowledge structures, and clinical experience. These manifest as prototype-based pattern recognition of infectious diseases, contextual adaptation of standardized guidelines through professional knowledge, and experience-driven intuitive judgments with potential cognitive biases. Simultaneously, decision-making is significantly molded by external clinical contexts, including the complexity and informational uncertainty of patient presentations, the rigid constraints of emergency department workload and resource availability, and the effectiveness of interdisciplinary information transfer. Furthermore, the widespread presence of heuristic thinking and cognitive biases during triage decision-making creates a tension with electronic decision-support tools designed to enhance decision consistency. The study suggests that establishing a closed-loop learning mechanism incorporating systematic feedback and structured reflection represents a potential pathway for optimizing the quality of triage decisions and enhancing resilience in responding to emerging and unknown infectious diseases.