| Interruptions are frequent occurrences in a variety of healthcare environments, and the Institute of Medicine has claimed that interruptions are likely contributors to medical errors. For this reason, the study of interruptions in healthcare has recently been heavily pursued by researchers. The published studies, however, have been quite homogeneous, focusing only on the person being interrupted (the interruptee). This one-sided perspective on interruptions is a concern because it does not capture the dual (interruptee-interrupter) complexities of interruptions.;This study examines interruptions in healthcare from the interrupter's point-of-view. The objective was to understand interruptions from a completely different perspective---one that explains the cognitive processes underlying the decision to interrupt and one that tries to understand the situation prior to an interruption occurring. This study meets its objective by identifying how nurses determine the interruptibility of other nurses, and by determining what interruptions are warranted, even if a nurse's interruptibility was determined to be low.;The interrupters of focus were expert nurses within a hospital intensive care unit interrupting other nurses. Over 15 hours of observation and 10 in-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with nurses. The data were then analyzed using dimensional analysis, a form of qualitative analysis used to understand and describe human experiences or phenomena within their social context.;This study found that nurses use a variety of conditional factors that are bounded by contextual dimension to assess the interruptibility of other nurses, and that only two types of interruptions were warranted, even if a nurse's interruptibility was determined to be low: 1) notifying a nurse about a doctor calling, and 2) a patient-related emergency. This study also found that nurses use a combination of verbal, non-verbal, direct, indirect, targeted, and non-targeted methods for interrupting and that interruptions have both negative and positive consequences.;This study broadens our understanding of interruptions, which allows us to design interruption interventions that are more compatible with nurses' workflow and benefit patient safety. |
