Understanding Emergency Medicine Physicians Multitasking Behaviors Around Interruptions

Area of Science:

• Human Factors
• Cognitive Psychology
• Healthcare Systems Engineering

Background:

• Interruptions significantly impair human performance, especially in high-risk settings like emergency departments (EDs).
• Existing interruption models fail to capture the complexities of real-world environments and multitasking behaviors.
• Understanding physician responses to interruptions is crucial for developing effective workflow solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a comprehensive, three-phase framework for analyzing interruptions and multitasking.
• To provide a robust method for categorizing complex interruption scenarios.
• To offer a detailed description of physician behaviors during interruptions in the ED.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel three-phase interruption framework (start transition, engagement, end transition).
• Application of the framework to categorize 457 observed interruption episodes.
• Analysis of physician task suspension, engagement in new tasks, and resumption patterns.

Main Results:

• Out of 457 interruption episodes, 76.1% involved immediate task suspension.
• Physicians engaged in new, self-initiated tasks during interruptions 35.9% of the time.
• The interrupted task was not directly resumed in 62.1% of episodes.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a more detailed understanding of physician behaviors in complex environments.
• Identifying diverse interruption and resumption patterns can inform the design of interruption mitigation strategies.
• This research supports the development of safer and more effective healthcare workflows.