This article reports on a quality improvement project that had the objective of increasing emergency department screening and identification of high-risk youth, aged 11 through 17 years, through the Short Screen for Child Sex Trafficking; the paper presents the authors’ methodology, outcomes, and conclusions.
Identification of sex-trafficked youth in the emergency department (ED) is difficult and routine screening is uncommon. Objectives: Our Quality Improvement (QI) Project aimed to increase ED screening and identification of high-risk youth using the Short Screen for Child Sex Trafficking (SSCST).Participants: Youth (11 through 17 years) seeking care at two metropolitan EDs with a high-risk chief complaint triggering a best practice alert (BPA).Methods: A BPA prompted administration of the SSCST and referral of screen 'positive' youth for comprehensive evaluation for child sex trafficking by the forensic nurse examiner (FNE). Targeted QI interventions defined three study periods (SP). Outcomes measures included screening 50% of high-risk youth with 50% of those youth referred for FNE evaluation. Over three study periods, 5454/13,956 (39.1%) youth triggered a BPA for high-risk chief complaint; 4354 (78.6%) received the SSCST screen; 1336 (76.0%) of screen-positive youth were referred for FNE evaluation. Outcomes measures were exceeded during all three study periods. SSCST modifications to increase specificity led to a significant decrease in the percentage of positive screens (42.8% SP1 vs 29.4% SP3). Financial programmatic support and further staff training led to an increase in FNE evaluations (86.4 SP3 vs 5.7% of referred youth SP1). Identification of trafficked patients increased from 1.3% of screen-positive youth to 11.3% (SP1 vs SP3; p < 0.0001). Routine screening for child sex trafficking can be implemented in the ED setting and increases the identification of at-risk youth. (Published Abstracts Provided)