Completing Patient Presentation (Pretriage)

Complete the sections of Patient Presentation screen listed below as required. Mandatory fields are denoted with a red marker.

Health Card Swipe Area
Presenting Complaint
Patient Identifiers
Patient Cohort Identification
Patient Arrival
Priority in Queue, Care Location, Care Instructions

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A short video is available here.

Important: Some hospitals may opt out of using Patient Presentation (Pretriage) in eCTAS. For example, some hospitals integrated at a Complex level may decide to use their HIS to receive/pretriage patients. Nurses must ensure they fully understand the unique workflow at their hospitals.

Tip: Use Keyboard Navigation & Shortcuts to optimize navigation of eCTAS screens (e.g., click Tab ). To view diagrams of each screen's specific tab flow/order, click on the corresponding link: Infection Control, Patient Presentation, Triage Assessment, Vital Signs.

Health Card Swipe Area

It is possible to integrate eCTAS with your hospital's health card swiping system. If you are a complex hospital, patient demographics may be pre-populated if your system has been set up to receive information from your Hospital Information System.

Important: Consult with your hospital’s eCTAS resource to check if this feature is enabled

Health Card Swipe Field

If card swiping is enabled, click in the Health Card Swipe field and then swipe the patient health card.
The following should be populated: First Name, Last Name, Gender, Date of Birth and Health Card Number.
Always check to ensure populated information from card swiping is accurate.

Note: Only first and last names will be pulled into eCTAS when card swiping is used (i.e. middle names are not captured).

Important: Only Ontario Government issued green health cards will work. White health cards will not work.

Health Card Swipe Failure

Some cards may be damaged or scratched and may not populate designated fields. If this occurs, an error message will appear under the Health Card Swipe field.

Presenting Complaint

This section is where the nurse enters the reason for a patient’s visit.

Complaint text entered will drive the search parameters of the CEDIS Complaint Smart Search feature.

It is mandatory to enter a complaint in at least one of the complaint fields:

Patient’s Stated Complaint field: The patient’s complaint in the patient’s own words
and/or

Nurse Assessed Complaint field: If clinically appropriate, a nurse may also enter the patient complaint using the nurse’s own words.
Examples of when it may be clinically appropriate for a nurse to enter their own assessment: A patient is unconscious or unable to state their own complaint; a complaint other than the one stated by the patient is observed e.g., a patient may state they have a headache, while the nurse observes significant head injury. The nurse’s clinical description adds value or clarity to diagnosis.


	Important: To improve the accuracy of the CEDIS Complaint Smart Search results, follow the guidelines below.

Keep complaints focused, limited to 2 to 3 relevant keywords and use commas to separate different health concerns.
Avoid using slashes or dashes.
Use commas to separate different health concerns; text in between commas is treated as one search term i.e. abdominal pain, head trauma.
If patient expresses multiple complaints, use your clinical judgement to enter the most acute presenting complaint.
Examples: Patient states “my blood pressure is high, I have stomach pains, vomiting, and sore ribs from coughing”. The nurse can enter “high blood pressure, abdominal pain” as the most acute presenting complaints.

Patient Identifiers

Patient cannot be identified check box: check this box if it is not possible to enter patient identifiers i.e. patient is unable to speak.
The Patient's Last Name will appear as 'Unknown', and the Patient's First Name as 'Patient'.
If a gender is indicated as 'Male' or 'Female' in the Patient Identifiers section, it will appear in the Patient's First Name field instead of the word 'Patient' i.e. 'Unknown Male', or 'Unknown Female'.

Important: Follow your hospital's protocols for handling multiple unknown patients. Confirm with your hospital's eCTAS Resources regarding how to document any descriptive identifying information consistently in other eCTAS fields e.g. entering physical characteristics or other identifying details in the Triage Notes fields, etc.

Note: If the Patient cannot be identified check box is checked, eCTAS will not search for Previous Visit matches within the last 10 days. To re-enable the Previous Visit flag feature, uncheck the Patient cannot be identified check box. Previous Visit matches will be flagged on the Triage Assessment screen.

Patient’s Last Name: Enter the patient’s last name
Patient's First Name: Enter the patient’s first name
Health Card Number: Enter patient’s health card number if available; do not enter version code letters. Please note, entering a health card number does not equate to health card validation. A health card number is not mandatory.
Gender: Use the buttons to select the appropriate response: Male, Female, or Unknown.
Patient Does Not Consent check box: Triage nurses are considered part of the circle of care and therefore obtaining patient consent is not required – this has been verified in a full privacy review. However, if the patient indicates that they do not wish to have their triage information for the current emergency visit available to other hospitals who use eCTAS, then a nurse may check this box.

Patient Cohort Identification

Birthdate: enter the patient’s Date of Birth (DOB) manually in the format presented (i.e. mm/dd/yyyy) or use the buttons shown below to enter DOB. See section called Date and Time Entry for more tips on entering date information
Cohort: the system automatically picks the patient’s cohort if DOB has been entered (Adult or Paeds)
If DOB is unknown, the cohort can be manually selected by clicking on the appropriate button (Adult or Paeds)

Estimated Age: if a paediatric patient’s DOB information is unknown, the nurse must enter an estimated age. Select the appropriate Years or Months from the drop down list to indicate the estimated age.

Important: A nurse may override the cohort that was attributed to the patient’s birthdate, as long as they are aware of the impact on CEDIS complaints, modifiers and Vital Sign ranges. For example, a nurse may choose to select the cohort of Paeds for a 19 year old that sustained a significant brain injury at birth with minimal communication ability, delayed psycho-social development, and delayed physical development.

Patient Arrival

Although this section is not mandatory, your hospital’s protocols may require you to document this information.

Patient Located in EMS Area check box: Check this option if appropriate. This will display beside the patient's name in the queues.

Mode of Arrival: Select the patient’s mode of arrival by clicking on the drop down arrow to see the list of options: Walk in, EMS, Police, Air.

Mode of Arrival Option

Additional Fields

If EMS (Emergency Medical Services) is selected, additional fields are available. Enter information as per your hospital’s protocol.

EMS Number: ambulance vehicle number
Arrival date and time: time when EMS brought the patient to hospital
Offload date and time: time when care of patient is officially transferred

If Police is selected, additional fields are available. Enter information as per your hospital protocol.

Badge Number: badge number of police officer who escorts the patient
Division: police division of office who escorts the patient

Completing Patient Presentation

There are two buttons that can be used to submit Pretriage information: The I’m Done Pretriage button or the Continue Triage button located at the bottom right of the Patient Presentation screen. The appropriate button to select depends on your hospital’s unique integration and triage workflow. Triage nurses must consult with hospital resources to ensure that they are fully aware of their hospital's triage workflow.

Note: An 'Error Sending..." alert will appear on the queue when a Pretriage assessment, Triage assessment, Reassessment or ToA, fails to save to the eCTAS system.

Tip: In the bottom left of the Patient Presentation (Pretriage) screen, you will notice three buttons: Priority in Queue, Care Location and Care Instructions. A nurse can use these to enter clinically relevant information. See the Priority in Queue, Care Location and Care Instructions for more details.