TY - JOUR
T1 - Interruptions experienced by cardiovascular intensive care unit nurses
T2 - An observational study
AU - Sasangohar, Farzan
AU - Donmez, Birsen
AU - Easty, Anthony
AU - Storey, Helen
AU - Trbovich, Patricia
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarship and a Canadian Institute of Health Research Health Care, Technology, and Place Doctoral Scholarship awarded to Farzan Sasangohar, as well as an NSERC Discovery Grant awarded to Birsen Donmez. We gratefully thank Dr Mark Chignell and Dr Linda McGillis Hall for their insightful feedback and Parya Noban, Sahar Ameri, Jaquelyn Monis Rodriguez, and Mohd Asher for their help in data collection and analysis. The study sponsors were not involved in the conduct of this research. Furthermore, the authors have no conflicts of interest regarding this research.
PY - 2014/10
Y1 - 2014/10
N2 - Purpose: Intensive 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. Methods: An 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. Results: Although 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. Conclusions: Mitigation 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.
AB - Purpose: Intensive 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. Methods: An 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. Results: Although 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. Conclusions: Mitigation 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.
KW - Cardiovascular
KW - ICU
KW - Interruptions
KW - Nursing
KW - Task severity
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jcrc.2014.05.007
DO - 10.1016/j.jcrc.2014.05.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 24974048
AN - SCOPUS:84906056533
SN - 0883-9441
VL - 29
SP - 848
EP - 853
JO - Journal of Critical Care
JF - Journal of Critical Care
IS - 5
ER -