Interruptions and Task Management in Healthcare Settings

Interruptions in healthcare encompass any unforeseen event that momentarily diverts clinicians from their primary task, ranging from alarm alerts to unplanned discussions with colleagues. Such disruptions are ubiquitous across clinical environments – from wards and intensive care units to radiology suites and emergency departments. While brief pauses may facilitate necessary information exchange, frequent or poorly timed interruptions can degrade concentration, extend task duration and elevate the risk of errors. Task management in this context refers to the strategies and systems that practitioners and organisations deploy to prioritise, sequence and resume work activities effectively, thereby mitigating the negative effects of interruptions. Recent advances have explored both human factors approaches – for example, training in interruption recovery and optimised team communication – and system-level solutions such as automated workload allocation and interface design to support smooth task transitions. The global significance of this research lies in its direct impact on patient safety, staff wellbeing and operational efficiency. By understanding when and why interruptions occur and by embedding resilience into workflows, healthcare systems can reduce cognitive burden, preserve care quality and foster a safer environment for patients and practitioners alike.

Research from Nature Portfolio

A multimethod investigation employed wearable eye-tracking devices and time-motion analysis to characterise nurses’ multitasking and interruption patterns during routine care. Twenty-three nurse–patient pairs were observed over thousands of minutes of recorded activity, revealing that scheduled medication administration, documentation and monitoring tasks were frequently performed simultaneously. Focus group interviews with nursing staff surfaced three core themes: pervasive engagement in numerous small tasks, complexity of patient symptom management and high interruption rates. The study underscored that multitasking often arises from the necessity to juggle patient care and interprofessional communication within limited time slots. It concluded that creating protected time and optimised task environments would allow nurses to focus on high-priority activities, thereby enhancing patient safety and reducing cognitive overload.

Interruptions and Task Management in Healthcare Settings publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in interruptions and task management in healthcare settings across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Interruption: Any event that diverts attention from an ongoing task, potentially causing delays or errors if not managed effectively.

Task switching: The cognitive process of shifting attention between two or more tasks, which often incurs a time penalty and increases mental workload.

Multitasking: Simultaneous engagement in multiple tasks, requiring rapid alternation of attention and coordination of different activities.

Mental workload: The total cognitive effort required to perform a task, influenced by task complexity, system usability and external disruptions.

References

1. Integrated Automatic Examination Assignment Reduces Radiologist Interruptions: A 2-Year Cohort Study of 232,022 Examinations. Journal of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (2024).
2. Workflow interruption and nurses’ mental workload in electronic health record tasks: An observational study. BMC Nursing (2023).
3. Exploring nurses' multitasking in clinical settings using a multimethod study. Scientific Reports (2023).