Search results for "Interruptions and distractions"

Interruptions are a known patient safety hazard. This direct observation study demonstrated that intensive care unit nurses were interrupted about every 20 minutes. Interruptions by physicians were of longer duration and were more likely to result in the nurse moving to another activity. The authors conclude that further study is needed to determine the clinical significance of interruptions in the intensive care unit setting.

Interruptions are known to contribute to medication errors. This direct observation study found that resident physicians and physician assistants experienced 57 interruptions per 100 medication orders. The authors suggest that inpatient health systems should implement strategies to reduce interruptions during medication ordering.

Interruptions are known to contribute to medication administration errors. This pre–post study found that nurses experienced fewer interruptions and made fewer medication errors following the introduction of a separate medication room. These results demonstrate how changing the work environment can promote safety.

Disruptive clinician behavior has a negative effect on teamwork that could contribute to patient harm. Examining the literature on disruptive behavior in the operating room, this review identified intrapersonal, organizational, and interpersonal factors that facilitate disruptive conduct and discussed its impact on teams, clinicians, patients, and organizations. The authors recommend strategies to address disruptive behaviors among clinicians such as documenting standards of behavior.

Interruptions are prevalent in health care delivery settings. This review discusses epidemiology, quality improvement, cognitive systems engineering, and applied cognitive psychology as prominent research traditions examining interruptions in health care. The authors suggest that a more integrated approach that combines perspectives from these research traditions could enhance design of interventions to reduce interruptions.

Prior research demonstrates that interruptions in health care can compromise patient safety. In this study, researchers observed interruptions experienced by nuclear medicine technologists in their work environment and found that some interruptions were helpful. In addition, technologists had developed personal strategies to optimize for safety.

Interruptions are common in care settings and can introduce safety hazards into health care processes. This commentary describes an observational method to explore factors that contribute to interruptions from various perspectives to better understand the reasons for interruptions and design strategies to manage them. A past PSNet perspective discussed an approach to reduce interruptions.

Interruptions and distractions are well-recognized sources of error. Distractions in the operating room are common. In this randomized crossover study, researchers observed residents performing a virtual salpingectomy and subjected them to time periods in which they received pages versus quiet phases without interruptions. The majority of residents made at least one unsafe clinical decision while trying to multitask, further supporting that interruptions and distractions adversely impact patient safety.

Interruptions can lead to errors in care, but they may be necessary to address urgent situations. This direct observation and device audit study classified nursing interruptions as either detrimental or necessary. Investigators determined that interrupting a nurse in the patient room was most likely to be a safety hazard, whereas alerts to nurses outside of patient rooms were more likely to be beneficial. This work underscores the challenge of optimizing interruptions to maintain patient safety.

Interruptions and task-switching are common contributors to complexity in emergency care. Exploring behaviors associated with multitasking in various disciplines, including human factors engineering, cognition science, and business, this review outlines a framework for enhancing understanding of multitasking, such as whether it can be performed successfully and types of actions that can be combined safely.

Interruptions are inevitable for busy clinicians, and recently studies have shown that interruptions can increase workload for physicians and raise the risk of medication administration errors by nurses. However, these safety risks must be balanced against the fact that interruptions are often necessary for patient care. This study analyzed data from telephone logs and a formal quality assurance program to examine the effect of telephone interruptions on accuracy of on-call radiology residents' study interpretations. The authors found that a higher frequency of interruptions was associated with more diagnostic errors. This study is one of the first to document clinical consequences of physician interruptions and adds to our understanding of systems contributors to diagnostic errors. An incident involving an incorrect overnight radiology interpretation is discussed in a past AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

This qualitative study characterized safety hazards in medication dispensing in community pharmacies. The authors conclude that the major sources of risk pertained to interruptions and distractions, which were often exacerbated by production pressures.

Exploring the existing evidence on interruptions in health care, this commentary reveals that most studies focus on the rate of interruptions rather than the relationship between interruptions and errors. The author calls for research to evaluate how use of multitasking behaviors to manage interruptions and to differentiate between appropriate interruptions that prevent errors and those that contribute to preventable harm.

Interruptions are often cited as a source of potential errors in nursing care. However, this qualitative study found that emergency department nurses perceived their ability to multitask and handle interruptions as a necessary skill and an important source of professional pride.

This human factors engineering study used direct observation to determine that nurses' decisions whether to interrupt other nurses' work depended on the reason, the potential consequences, and interpersonal factors.

This systematic review identified several systems causes of medication administration errors, including interruptions, communication breakdowns, fatigue, and overall workload. A recent review found only limited evidence supporting strategies to prevent medication administration errors.

This study found that while distractions and interruptions were common for anesthesiologists, most of them had no appreciable effect on patient safety or clinical care.

Although recent research has focused on reducing interruptions during acute care nurses' work, this review found little evidence to support the notion that decreasing such interruptions would benefit patient outcomes.

In this analysis, short interruptions greatly increased sequence errors. These findings contribute to patient safety concerns about distractions during medication administration and other sequenced processes.

Finding that interruptions were common in anesthesia practice, this study used direct observation to identify strategies that anesthesiologists utilized to mitigate the effects of such distractions.