The message is clear. Don’t bother the nurse when she’s giving a patient medication. Definitely don’t bother her more than once. Definitely, definitely do not bother her when she is giving a patient a major medication, one which has to be administered carefully.

You would think this obvious. Of course, it is obvious. Interrupting people doing important tasks ups the odds of error.

But, in the world of health care, you have to prove something is a problem before it can be corrected.

Now, it has.

Maybe bedside nurses will get some relief from the constant interruptions they experience.

Maybe hospital medication error rates will come down, if this study is taken seriously.

Business Week/Bloomberg

“MONDAY, April 26 (HealthDay News) — “Distracting an airline pilot during taxi, takeoff or landing could lead to a critical error. Apparently the same is true of nurses who prepare and administer medication to hospital patients.

“A new study shows that interrupting nurses while they’re tending to patients’ medication needs increases the chances of error. As the number of distractions increases, so do the number of errors and the risk to patient safety. (Emphasis added)

“We found that the more interruptions a nurse received while administering a drug to a specific patient, the greater the risk of a serious error occurring,” said the study’s lead author, Johanna I. Westbrook, director of the Health Informatics Research and Evaluation Unit at the University of Sydney in Australia.

“For instance, four interruptions in the course of a single drug administration doubled the likelihood that the patient would experience a major mishap, according to the study, reported in the April 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. (Emphasis added)

“Experts say the study is the first to show a clear association between interruptions and medication errors.”

Source: Business Week/Bloomberg News/HealthDay News, April 26, 2010

Citation: Archives of Internal Medicine,“ 2010;170(8):690-692.