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Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies

BACKGROUND: Multitasking is a key skill for emergency department (ED) providers. Yet, potentially beneficial or debilitating effects for provider functioning and cognition are underexplored. We therefore aimed to investigate the role of multitasking for ED physicians’ work stress and situation aware...

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Autores principales: Augenstein, Tobias, Schneider, Anna, Wehler, Markus, Weigl, Matthias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33413575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-020-00824-8
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author Augenstein, Tobias
Schneider, Anna
Wehler, Markus
Weigl, Matthias
author_facet Augenstein, Tobias
Schneider, Anna
Wehler, Markus
Weigl, Matthias
author_sort Augenstein, Tobias
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Multitasking is a key skill for emergency department (ED) providers. Yet, potentially beneficial or debilitating effects for provider functioning and cognition are underexplored. We therefore aimed to investigate the role of multitasking for ED physicians’ work stress and situation awareness (SA). METHODS: Two consecutive, multi-source studies utilizing standardized expert observations in combination with physicians’ self-reports on stress and SA were set out in an academic ED. To control for ED workload, measures of patient acuity, patient counts, and ED staff on duty were included. Regression analyses estimated associations between observed proportion of time spent in multitasking with matched ED physicians’ reports on stress (study 1) and SA (study 2). RESULTS: ED physicians engaged between 18.7% (study 1) and 13.0% (study 2) of their worktime in multitasking. Self-reported as well as expert-observed multitasking were significantly associated. This confirms the internal validity of our observational approach. After controlling for ED workload, we found that physicians who engaged more frequently in multitasking perceived higher work stress (Beta = .02, 95%CI .001–.03; p = .01). In study 2, ED physicians with more frequent multitasking behaviors reported higher SA (B = .08, 95%CI .02–.14; p = .009). CONCLUSIONS: Multitasking is often unavoidable in ED care. Our findings suggest that ED physicians’ multitasking increases stress experiences, yet, may facilitate professional’s experiences of situation awareness. Our results warrant further investigation into potentially ambivalent effects of ED providers’ multitasking in effectively sharing time between competing demands while maintaining performance and safety.
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spelling pubmed-77920862021-01-11 Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies Augenstein, Tobias Schneider, Anna Wehler, Markus Weigl, Matthias Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med Original Research BACKGROUND: Multitasking is a key skill for emergency department (ED) providers. Yet, potentially beneficial or debilitating effects for provider functioning and cognition are underexplored. We therefore aimed to investigate the role of multitasking for ED physicians’ work stress and situation awareness (SA). METHODS: Two consecutive, multi-source studies utilizing standardized expert observations in combination with physicians’ self-reports on stress and SA were set out in an academic ED. To control for ED workload, measures of patient acuity, patient counts, and ED staff on duty were included. Regression analyses estimated associations between observed proportion of time spent in multitasking with matched ED physicians’ reports on stress (study 1) and SA (study 2). RESULTS: ED physicians engaged between 18.7% (study 1) and 13.0% (study 2) of their worktime in multitasking. Self-reported as well as expert-observed multitasking were significantly associated. This confirms the internal validity of our observational approach. After controlling for ED workload, we found that physicians who engaged more frequently in multitasking perceived higher work stress (Beta = .02, 95%CI .001–.03; p = .01). In study 2, ED physicians with more frequent multitasking behaviors reported higher SA (B = .08, 95%CI .02–.14; p = .009). CONCLUSIONS: Multitasking is often unavoidable in ED care. Our findings suggest that ED physicians’ multitasking increases stress experiences, yet, may facilitate professional’s experiences of situation awareness. Our results warrant further investigation into potentially ambivalent effects of ED providers’ multitasking in effectively sharing time between competing demands while maintaining performance and safety. BioMed Central 2021-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7792086/ /pubmed/33413575 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-020-00824-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Original Research
Augenstein, Tobias
Schneider, Anna
Wehler, Markus
Weigl, Matthias
Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title_full Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title_fullStr Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title_full_unstemmed Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title_short Multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
title_sort multitasking behaviors and provider outcomes in emergency department physicians: two consecutive, observational and multi-source studies
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7792086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33413575
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-020-00824-8
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