Even with­in a sin­gle facil­i­ty, there can be diver­gent cri­te­ria for per­ma­nent staff com­pared to trav­el or agency staff. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion expec­ta­tions fur­ther com­pound this diver­si­ty, rang­ing from a mere cer­tifi­cate to evi­dence of demon­strat­ed triage expe­ri­ence, often sup­port­ed by ref­er­ences or posi­tion statements.

It is cru­cial to select a triage course that aligns with the Emer­gency Triage Edu­ca­tion Kit (ETEK), a teach­ing resource craft­ed by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment Depart­ment of Health and Aged Care. This resource is instru­men­tal in ensur­ing the con­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of the Aus­tralasian Triage Scale (ATS) across var­i­ous health ser­vices. The ATS utilis­es a scor­ing sys­tem of 1 to 5, assigned based on a con­cise yet com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment, to deter­mine the clin­i­cal urgency of patients pre­sent­ing at emer­gency departments.

All ETEK pro­gram resources are acces­si­ble online for free, offer­ing a com­pre­hen­sive guide­line, a quick ref­er­ence guide, and a work­book (sub­ject to peri­od­ic reviews, with poten­tial new edi­tions). While these resources serve as valu­able tools for knowl­edge acqui­si­tion and refresh­ment, it’s impor­tant to note that the web­site doesn’t issue com­ple­tion records or cer­tifi­cates. Instead, the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of these free resources is to pro­vide edu­ca­tors with a reli­able source for ensur­ing con­sis­ten­cy in teach­ing deliv­ery.
CRANAplus, recog­nis­ing the diverse needs of health­care pro­fes­sion­als, pro­vides triage learn­ing through both online and face-to-face formats.

Our one-day ​‘Triage Emer­gency Care’ course, root­ed in the ETEK, caters specif­i­cal­ly to nurs­es, gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­ers, and oth­er health­care pro­fes­sion­als. This course empha­sis­es the appli­ca­tion of ETEK prin­ci­ples in rur­al, remote, and iso­lat­ed set­tings, empow­er­ing prac­ti­tion­ers to con­fi­dent­ly assess patients and apply the ATS for appro­pri­ate triage categorisation. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, CRANAplus offers the online ​‘Triage Emer­gency Care – Inten­sive’ course, which com­bines self-paced mod­ules with online work­shops to allow par­tic­i­pants to engage in prac­tice sce­nar­ios with a focus on rur­al and remote health­care principles.

Con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance of prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, CRANAplus strong­ly rec­om­mends super­vised triages for clin­i­cians who have com­plet­ed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion but lack prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence. This entails the real-world appli­ca­tion of triage skills under the guid­ance of expe­ri­enced triage nurses. 

Fur­ther­more, because triage is a fre­quent­ly audit­ed area, ensur­ing you have the appro­pri­ate knowl­edge and prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion is essen­tial to ensure safe prac­tice and pos­i­tive patient outcomes.

You can find out more about CRANAplus’ triage cours­es here:

• Triage Emer­gency Care (Face-to-face)
• Triage Emer­gency Care — Inten­sive (Online)