Педиатрия и терапия
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Triage of children with mental health difficulties presenting in A&E in a general hospital

Anne-Frédérique Naviaux

In Wexford and Waterford, an “out of hours” child psychiatric service has been developed, in order to provide help when the CAMHS services are not accessible. Providing a service for under 18 years old patients with mental health issues presenting in Accident and Emergency (A&E) or hospitalised on a Ward (Paediatric, psychiatric or other), it functions with extremely limited resources (a consultant psychiatrist and a doctor in psychiatric training) and therefore needs an efficient triage procedure. Several triage tools were internationally developed for dealing with emergencies; the difficulty was to find a triage tool that would be specific enough for a paediatric population but that would also be useful for patients with Mental Health issues. The purpose of this article is to review existing triage tools, and especially the 2016 Irish Children’s Triage System (ICTS) and to discuss how we believe this triage tool could respond to our specific needs in this new ‘out of hours’ CAMHS cover for Waterford /Wexford area.