Identification and Research of Impacts of Social Categorization Process in Nurse Triage (SOCIAL SORTING)

Emergencies units are a special way to access at cares. These units must continually adapt their practice because it is impossible to predict patient's flow, number of hospital's available beds and kinds of emergencies (medical, chirurgical, psychiatric, social). Organization and quality of cares are based on a balance between competences and human attributes.

The first step in medical care takes place thanks to the nurse triage. They must summarize a lot of information about patients ( such as medical letters, firemen's transmission,...) and make a quick clinical exam. This action permits to determine an emergency degree and prioritize it. This activity is based on clinical categorization and clinical tools (scales of triage).

The clinical categorization is a professional competence (nurses learn what categorization is at school and develop it at hospital).In this research social categorization will be confronted with another type of categorization : the social categorization.

The latter it is very different categorization, in fact, it is shared by anybody (nonprofessionals of healthcare and professionals). The social categorization can be described like the phenomenon that permits to simplify the reading of the world. That also permits for anybody to define itself and define the one or more group membership. That process is continually in movement (social prejudices changes according to History, depending on the place of the world htat person lives,...).

The social categorization process has a real impact on action, thinking and relation with the world and the others persons.

The social categorization reveals its process in prejudice (sensitive dimension), stereotypes(cognitive dimension, stereotypes are organized around a central trait and others peripherals traits) and conducts to discrimination (behavior dimension) about origins, diseases, age,....Social categorization provides of naive theorization about social objects. For instance, a man who stereotypes woman with blond hair thinking "she is stupid" when he sees her in the street ( that it is a prejudice, a central trait) and this feeling conducts him to think "she is superficial, she does not work, she watches reality TV show everyday,..."(that it is a stereotype with peripherals traits). If this same man does not accept to help this woman if she needs him, it can considered like discrimination.

A lot of studies in public administrations have shown the important influence of social categorization on power which exists in any relations and the non-personalization as final response. In healthcare domain for instance, the research of WILLIAMS have shown existence of "bads patients".

Our first hypothesis is that process of social categorization exists and it has several faces(potentially negative). We also make the hypothesis that they have impacts on several aspects of medical care like : waiting time, management of pain,....We finally do the hypothesis that exist links between : the presence of process of social categorization in triage nursing and : individual traits (race, sex, age,...), specificities of any contexts.

Social Sorting wishes to identify with scientific measure the presence of social categorization process in triage nursing and it is unprecedented.

Then it is also to describe the impacts of this process on several parts of the medical care.

It could be interesting to improve nursing staff. It could be also interesting to patients because it is the equality of health offer which is asked in Social Sorting. In France, in 2015, 10 billions of patients came in emergency units. The study of feasibility wich was done before Social Sorting has shown that 20 percent of nurses sorting include social categorization nurse.

The results of this research could interest professional of healthcare domain and socio-psychologist.