High inter-observer agreement of observer-perceived pain assessment in the emergency department

Background Triage is used to prioritize the patients in the emergency department. The majority of the triage systems include the patients’ pain score to assess their level of acuity by using a combination of patient reported pain and observer-perceived pain; the latter therefore requires a certain degree of inter-observer agreement. The aim of the present study was to assess the inter-observer agreement of perceived pain among emergency department nurses and to evaluate if it was influenced by predetermined factors like age and gender.