Under the commitment to working together to meet health needs in the Pacific, a group of Clinical Nursing specialists from the Pacific Emergency Education (PEE) were deployed to Kiribati to deliver Triage Training and Clinical Leadership Development to Kiribati nurses at the Tungaru Central Hospital and Betio Hospitals Emergency Departments.  

Bronwen Griffiths and Angela Gittus, who made up two of the three member PEE team, bring a strong background in public and global health, tropical medicine and humanitarian and disaster assistance. They have been working across the Pacific since 2016 in building capacity and capability for national nursing staff.   

This latest initiative in Kiribati addressed three components namely, Triage Training and Implementation using Interagency Integrated Triage Tool (ITT), Clinical Nursing Leadership Training, and Self Care in Practice facilitated by local trainers.   

Ms Griffiths shared the objective behind the training.   

“With this training our hope was to reduce risk in the emergency department by establishing a structured process of categorising patient presentations by urgency and determining appropriate patient flow within the emergency department.  

"We also worked alongside nursing and medical staff and mentored their acquisition of new skills and processes to facilitate a safe transition to this new system.”  

One of the main focuses for the nursing specialists were to support the development of national health staff.  

“In addition to this, we worked to upskill our existing group of trainers, leaving them with resources and ongoing support to sustain the triage teaching needs of new staff in the ED. 

"Our hope was to improve patient outcomes and reduce morbidity and mortality via a structured approach to assessing patient acuity and providing timely treatment."