RESUMEN
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to assess emergency room nurses' knowledge and performance of triage nursing. METHODS: The instrument was developed through the stages of conceptual construction, item development, and validity and reliability testing. For the validity and reliability testing, data collected from 48 emergency room nurses using questionnaires was analyzed through descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and reliability coefficients. RESULTS: The knowledge part consisted of 30 items in nine areas, and its reliability was low (KR-20 =0.50). The correct answer rate was 71.8%. The performance section derived from the factor analysis was composed of two factors with nine items in the triage domain and three factors with 12 items in the non triage domain. The explanatory powers of these factors for the domains were 66.1% and 70.4%, respectively. The overall reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was .95, and the reliabilities for the two domains were .88 and .91, respectively. The nurses' mean performance level was 3.2(+/-0.45). CONCLUSION: The specific contents of the triage nursing work were identified from the developed scale; further research is necessary to in order to develop a scale capable of higher reliability and validity.