-
Journal of critical care · Oct 2014
Observational StudyInterruptions experienced by cardiovascular intensive care unit nurses: An observational study.
- Farzan Sasangohar, Birsen Donmez, Anthony Easty, Helen Storey, and Patricia Trbovich.
- Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; HumanEra, Techna, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
- J Crit Care. 2014 Oct 1;29(5):848-53.
PurposeIntensive care unit (ICU) nurses get interrupted frequently. Although interruptions take cognitive resources from a primary task and may hinder performance, they may also convey critical information. Effective management of interruptions in ICUs requires the understanding of interruption characteristics, the context in which interruption happens, and interruption content.MethodsAn observational study was conducted in a cardiovascular ICU at a Canadian teaching hospital. Four observers (1 PhD and 3 undergraduate students) trained in human factors research observed 40 nurses, approximately 1 hour each, over a 3-week period. Data were recorded by the observers in real time, using touchscreen tablet PCs and special software designed for this purpose.ResultsAlthough approximately half of the interruptions (~51%) happened during high-severity tasks, more than half of these interruptions, which happened during high-severity tasks, conveyed either work- or patient-related information. Furthermore, the rate of interruptions with personal content was significantly higher during low-severity tasks compared with medium- and high-severity tasks.ConclusionsMitigation strategies other than blocking should also be explored. In addition, interrupters might have evaluated primary task severity before interrupting. Therefore, making task severity more transparent may help others modulate when and how they interrupt a nurse.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.