Are gamifying exergames the future of intervention for people with dementia? Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Worldwide, emergency departments (EDs) are facing the dual challenges of a steadily increasing patient volume and strained medical resources, as well as the need to ensure the timeliness and safety of care delivery. As the first step in the emergency care process, triage plays a crucial role in ensuring patient safety and improving the efficiency of ED operations by rapidly assessing the severity of patients’ conditions and allocating medical resources appropriately (). Numerous studies have shown that high-quality triage not only shortens patient waiting times and alleviates ED overcrowding but also reduces adverse events caused by triage delays or misjudgments, thereby improving the efficiency of care for critically ill patients (). In recent years, with the shift of emergency nursing models toward competency-based professional practice and the rapid development of AI-assisted triage, digital health technologies, and information management systems, the role of emergency nurses in triage has gradually expanded from traditional patient classification to a more comprehensive function integrating rapid clinical assessment, risk identification, evidence-based decision-making, interprofessional collaboration, application of digital tools, and resource coordination (, ). Recent studies and systematic reviews indicate that although digital transformation has improved the efficiency and standardization of emergency triage, nurses’ professional judgment remains the core determinant of triage quality, with digital technologies serving primarily as decision-support tools rather than substitutes for clinical judgment (). Consequently, how to comprehensively assess and enhance emergency nurses’ triage competence has become a major focus in the field of emergency nursing. Nursing competence is typically defined as the integrated application of knowledge, skills, clinical judgment, professional values, and professional attitudes in specific contexts (). In the emergency department setting, nurses’ triage competence is not only reflected in the accurate prioritization of patient conditions but also encompasses multidimensional abilities such as communication and coordination, teamwork, risk prediction, and emergency response (). Although triage processes have been continuously optimized in recent years, existing studies still report that nurses’ triage accuracy ranges from approximately 60 to 82%, with significant variations observed across regions, institutions, and levels of clinical experience (). These findings suggest that even under standardized triage criteria, substantial individual differences in emergency nurses’ triage competence persist, and the underlying characteristics of these differences warrant further investigation.