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posted by mrpg on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the gamma-radiation dept.

A first of its kind study shows typical interruptions experienced by on-call radiologists do not reduce diagnostic accuracy but do change what they look at and increase the amount of time spent on a case.

The implication of the finding is that as radiologists contend with an increasing number of workplace interruptions, they must either process fewer cases or work longer hours -- both of which have adverse effects in terms of patient outcomes, said Trafton Drew, the study's lead author. They also may spend more time looking at dictation screens than reviewing medical images.

"In radiology, there is a growing recognition that interruptions are bad and the number of interruptions faced by radiologists is increasing," said Drew, an assistant professor of cognitive and neural science in the University of Utah's Department of Psychology. "But there isn't much research at all on the consequences of this situation."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:31PM (5 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:31PM (#656716) Journal

    Are Radiologists the only ones affected by interruptions? With patients having bad outcomes.

    How about Software Developers affected by interruptions when they are not on SN? This has bad outcomes on unit tasting.

    Interruptions don't do anyone any good. They can be somewhat controlled. Have an office with a door that can close. Humans probably make more mistakes when interrupted, even if they are not radiologists. Especially if the context you must keep in your head is large and complex (software). Or you are concentrating on spotting some difficult to identify detail, such as a tumor in an image. "hey joe, it's lunchtime, chomp chomp chomp!" Or having your sleep interrupted: "hey bob, it's five p.m. time to go home!"

    Making it worse we live in a world of interruptions. Things dinging and donging and tweedle beeping at us for attention all the time. And pets. (For some people: children, hey look at me!)

    If radiologists' interruptions are causing bad patient outcomes, not to mention extra work hours, maybe the problem could be fixed by reducing interruptions, or getting more radiologists? Which would be cheaper do you think? What if you turn many of those non critical interruptions into one task to perform when not analyzing images?

    What about Uber safety drivers interrupted by having to look at the road from time to time. Which leads to bad outcomes for pedestrians.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:45PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:45PM (#656727)

    I think we can fix the radiologists' problem with interruptions by putting them in open office plans. We should make them be more social. That's their problem. They're a bunch of anti-social dorks! Probably can't get laid either! They'll be more productive being packed in with other radiologists so they can, er, collaborate! Yeah! That's it!

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 23 2018, @01:16PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 23 2018, @01:16PM (#657104) Journal

      Open plan offices are not conducive to getting laid.

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  • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:48PM

    by KiloByte (375) on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:48PM (#656735)

    Well, yeah, but conducting a study — or a series of studies — on a single specialisation who all do nearly identical tasks allows avoiding most biases that would cloud the results of a study on a more diverse group. Software developers for example perform different tasks even within the same team.

    Analyze a nice homogenous group first, and only then check if the results apply elsewhere.

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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:29PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:29PM (#656765) Journal

    How about Software Developers affected by interruptions when they are not on SN? This has bad outcomes on unit tasting.

    Or, conversely, allowing work to interrupt you Soylenting!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:03PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday March 22 2018, @10:03PM (#656890) Journal

    Interrupting a Radiologist means he just looks back at the xrays. Big deal.

    Interrupt a programmer deep in a line of code investigation and you might wipe out and hour and a half of work tracing some nasty bug.

    Nobody dies in either case, but the coder will be thinking murder sooner than the radiologist.

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