Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Li Montreal, nurses respond to 9-1-1 emergency calls for medical help, backed up by physicians when needed. In this context, they have to make rapid decisions based on limited and sometimes unreliable information. The purpose of this study was to describe the decision-making processes used by nurses in telephone triage and to examine the relations among these processes in relation to nurses' characteristics and performance. The study was conducted in real emergency conditions. The sample included 34 nurses and 50 calls. Each call was transcribed and subjected to performance evaluation and content analysis. This paper focuses on the cognitive analyses of two protocols associated with different outcomes. The results show that nurses' decision-making in triage situations are often based on surface features (patterns of symptoms) rather than the underlying pathophysiology, particularly in high urgency cases. High performance was related to decisions based on the evaluation of the whole emergency situation. The contribution of training and the effects of experience on triage performance are discussed.