Reasons for interrupting colleagues during emergency department work - A qualitative study

Emergency department team members frequently need to interact with each other, a circumstance causing multiple interruptions. However, information is lacking about the motives underlying these interruptions and this study aimed to explore clinicians' reasons to interrupt colleagues during emergency department work.

Semi-structured interviews with 10 physicians and 10 registered nurses at two Swedish emergency departments. The interviews were analyzed inductively using content analysis.

The working conditions to some extent sustained the clinicians' need to interrupt, for example different routines. Another reason to interrupt was to improve the initiator's work process, such as when the initiators perceived that the interruption had high clinical relevance. The third reason concerns the desire to influence the work process of colleagues in order to prevent mistakes and provide information for the person being interrupted to improve patient care.

The three identified categories for why emergency department clinicians interrupt their colleagues were related to working conditions and a wish to improve/influence the work processes for both initiators and recipients. Several of the reasons given for interrupting colleagues were done in order to improve patient care. Interruptions perceived as negative to the recipient were mostly related to the working conditions.