Emergency Department Dexamethasone Administration in Pediatric Asthma Exacerbations: How Timely is Timely?

Background: Early administration of systemic corticosteroids is an evidence-based intervention shown to decrease admission rates for acute asthma exacerbations. Developing pathways to improve timely steroid administration may overcome delays associated with Emergency Department (ED) crowding. Our primary aim was to decrease time from triage start time to steroid administration to less than 60 minutes for 80% of pediatric patients with moderately severe asthma exacerbations over a 1 year period, via implementation of triage nursing standing delegation orders (SDO). Methods: A multi-disciplinary team created nursing SDOs that were integrated …