Manchester Triage System (updated 24 February 2021)

Summary

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has raised a concern to NHS England and Improvement Patient Safety, following several reported incidents noting that organisations may not be using the latest version of The Manchester Triage System clinical risk management triage tool. Old versions of the system have outdated treatment/priority parameters for adult and paediatric sepsis that could affect patient outcome.

The updated Manchester Triage System can be accessed from the link below.

Content

The Manchester Triage System is a clinical risk management tool used by clinicians worldwide to enable them to safely manage patient flow when clinical need far exceeds capacity.

The MTS is now an integrated series of tools used in the following domain: 

• Emergency triage: Emergency departments.
• Telephone triage and advice: Urgent care desks.
• Pathfinder: Paramedic ambulances.
• Nursing and residential triage: Nursing and residential homes.
• SAFE pathways: Community-based HCPs.

The 5 triage tools all share: 

• A reductive methodology identifying life threatening illnesses and injuries first.
• A clinical risk management tool used Worldwide to safely manage patient flow when clinical demand exceeds capacity. 
• A common set of discriminators defined in a discriminator dictionary. 
• A shared language and common understanding. 
• Underpinning training packages and e-learning modules for practitioners. 
• A method of streaming for local implementation.

The Manchester Triage System is now the International Gold standard for Emergency Triage, used worldwide to triage millions of patients per year.