Nursing Safety: Is Multi-tasking as Great as We Think It Is?

Multi-tasking… one of my favorite subjects! Many of us believe that we are “good at”, even talented in, doing more than one thing at a time. To make matters worse, we nurses believe we are doing a good job of it! So what’s the deal with multi-tasking? Why is it so bad to nursing safety? What is really going on here? And how do we know this?

I want to start out with an example from my own experience. I used to run charge almost on a daily basis when I worked inpatient psych. I would be on the phone, looking at a computer, while someone was asking me a question on the side. Or I would be rounding up the patients for community meeting, delegating a room change to the support associates, and giving out my morning medications to the patients I also was caring for.

Yikes! This sounds scary! Even as I re-read the above paragraph I’m thinking, “She gave out her medications while walking around delegating tasks and finding other patients for a group?! How was that safe?”

So if you think you’re doing a “good job” at multi-tasking, think again. An article I found on NPR, shared research that scientists have discovered which points to the idea that we are not really that great at focusing on multiple things. They share that humans don’t really do more than one thing at a time; rather we do things at a very fast pace switching back and forth between tasks at rapid speeds giving us the illusion that we are “multi-tasking”.

To top it all off, with the recent booms of technology, the speed at which we receive information, and the “need-it-now” culture we live in, it is no wonder that we have to do 20 different things all at the same time. So if you think that when you check your email, while on the phone, in the car, listening to the radio that you are doing all of that “at once”- think again. The researchers at MIT actually were able to see the brain “struggling” as it moved quickly between the multiple tasks.

So what does this mean for us? As nurses, as caregivers, as busy nursing professionals? What is the deal with multi-tasking? Back to my own example I shared above, who’s to say I didn’t make mistakes when handing out my medications while doing several other things? And I am not suggesting that all nurses do this every single day. But it does happen. And if you are reading this thinking otherwise, you’re just not being honest with yourself.

Being a nurse we are called in 200 directions in the course of a shift, an hour, even a minute. I watched a wonderful video on a colleague’s blog about a month ago about the safety of nursing. Her clip shares how frustrating, overwhelming, and frighteningly unsafe it can be to be a nurse at any one minute of the day. So what can we do about this?

One simple and obvious response I share today is practice meditation. If you’d like to learn more and actually be led through a guided practice check out my recent video where I lead a guided breath technique. This is something that you can practice daily, at any time of the day, and for any length of time. Even if you only have five minutes at various intervals throughout your day. it is one way to increase your ability to focus, pay attention, and decrease the likelihood of getting distracted.

Some other ideas include: manage your interruptions, keep email/Facebook/Twitter checks to the minimum, or plan your day in blocks of time. By turning off the ringer, staying away from email, or scheduling your time you actually can spend more focused time in the present task.

As a nurse, keep pen and paper handy. Stay focused on the one task you are doing and if interrupted make a note. Once done with the task at hand then you can go back to the “interruption” and tend to that. Don’t try to do multiple things at any one time. It will just slow you up, decrease your productivity, and make you less efficient… Not to mention drive you crazy!