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Page 1 of 6 March / April 2010
Distractions and Interruptions: Impact on Nursing Studies and Strategies to Reduce Interruptions and Improve Care
Working at the point of care, nurses play a key role in the delivery of safe, quality healthcare. Acute care nurses have to make timely and relevant clinical decisions, yet work within environmental conditions that are conducive to error. A recent study showed that nurses on average were interrupted 3 to 6 times every hour by people, pagers, telephone, etc (Potter et al., 2005). The potential impact of interruptions and distractions includes medical and medication errors, ineffective delivery of care, conflict and stress among health professionals, latent failures, and poor outcomes.
Since the 1940s, the military and civilian aviation industries have studied how attention lapses caused by interruptions can lead to pilot error (Fitts & Jones, 1947). Operator interruptions and distractions have been shown to contribute to shut downs in nuclear power plants (Griffon-Fouco & Ghertman, 1984). In the business community research has shown that software engineers require more than 15 minutes to become reengaged in a task once they have been interrupted (DeMarco & Lister, 1987). But in healthcare only limited evidence (Ebright et al., 2003) has been available to help nursing practitioners and others understand the impact of interruptions and distractions on nursing care.
Better understanding of how interruptions in a nurse’s work affect clinical decision-making is a critical need, so that effective strategies can be developed to decrease interruptions and the likelihood of error. To help meet this need, a nationwide webcast on November 14, 2008, brought together nationally recognized experts to focus on Distractions and Interruptions: Impact on Nursing.1 Recent studies of the nature of nurses’ cognitive work and how environmental factors create disruptions that pose risks for medical errors were discussed. Strategies, innovations, and specific interventions to reduce distractions were discussed as ways to improve patient safety, nursing productivity, and quality of care, especially during medication management processes.
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March/April 2010 
