Throughout the workday, intensive care unit nurses must complete a multitude of tasks on the computer and frequently encounter workflow disruptions. To study the effect of software interruptions — alerts that momentarily deviate users from one task to another — researchers observed 30 ICU nurses performing a computerized medication order-entry task. Nurses completed the tasks with no interruption, back-to-back interruptions and nested interruptions where nurses had to perform two tasks during the interruption period, one of which was also interrupted.
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Researchers found the nested interruptions delayed the nurses’ return to the primary task and resulted in less accurate completion of the medication order-entry.
“Hospital environments are becoming increasingly complex,” said Farzan Sasangohar, PhD, an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station. “This can cause healthcare personnel to experience a heavy workload and numerous interruptions, many of which are unnecessary and can be delayed. It’s essential to appropriately time interruptions in order to better ensure patient safety.”
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