How to Manage Interruptions and Limit Attention Residue: A Guide for Physicians
It’s not just your imagination. It’s more challenging than ever to maintain your mental focus at work.
💉 EHR alerts
💉 Phone notifications
💉 Interruptions from staff
💉 Attention sapping apps
All of these and more conspire to make focus more difficult than ever before.
These constant interruptions and the lingering effects of shifting attention, known as attention residue, can severely hamper not only your effectiveness and productivity, but also your own well-being.
Resolving the current state of disorder in healthcare will require systemic change, including a fundamental shift in the functionality of many EHRs.
But protecting your headspace is a critical skill that can help you stay above the fray.
In this article, we’ll explore strategies that you can use to retake control of your mental focus, manage interruptions, and minimize attention residue in your daily life and practice.
Understanding Attention Residue
Attention residue happens when you switch tasks, but a part of your mind remains stuck on the previous task.
The little breadcrumbs that remain can jumble up your thoughts and make it harder to focus. And once you’re interrupted, no matter whether the issue was urgent or trivial, it’s easy to switch over into another unrelated brain drain, such as checking your email or social media, rather than returning to the task at hand.
Realistically, interruptions are a part of life in most medical settings. Apart from a few innovative healthcare systems, the current state of affairs creates the perfect setup for attention residue.
Each interruption requires a mental reset, which can take a considerable amount of time and effort. Ultimately this leads not only to decreased productivity and lost focus, but also to increased stress.
This isn’t just theoretical. Research looking at Emergency Department physicians and nurses has found that interruptions from a broad range of sources can seriously degrade the ability to remain focused and aware. What’s more, the disruptions in this study occurred on average about 11 times every hour.
Strategies to Regain Mental Focus
Ideally, our healthcare system leaders will realize the importance of creating pathways that will minimize interruptions. This process is underway in a number of medical systems. But even under the best of circumstances, interruptions are going to happen. Here are a few ways that you can limit the mental drain.
Prioritize and Plan
This can be a difficult step for physicians, since we don’t always have control over the way the day might go. But simply outlining your top priorities can help by giving you a focus and a “north star” for the day,
Start your day by outlining your top priorities. Whenever possible, highlight high-impact tasks when your mental energy is at its peak. For many people, that is the first thing in the morning.
Use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the Time-Priority Matrix) to distinguish between urgent and important tasks, and mitigate those less important time-wasters.
Time Blocking
Whenever possible, consider setting aside specific time blocks for different types of tasks. For example, set aside uninterrupted time to study for your boards, or for administrative work. If you have some control over your schedule at work, scheduling similar patient visits may be helpful, so that your mental flow is less likely to be interrupted.
Communicate your schedule and your plan to create these focused blocks of time to your team (or your family) to minimize unnecessary interruptions. Getting buy-in from your schedulers and administrative staff can help to make time blocking work for you.
Mindfulness and Meditation
Consider incorporating mindfulness practices into your daily routine. Techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, or yoga can help improve focus and reduce stress.
Meditation in particular has been found to be helpful in improving attention, focus, and memory and reducing stress. Just like medication or physical therapy, it’s important to be consistent. In one study, it took 8 weeks of regular practice before the impact of meditation was clear.
Taking a mindful pause before and after each patient, study, or procedure is a great way to mentally reset. In many cases, even this very brief break can improve your efficiency.
Meditation might sound intimidating, but it’s really quite simple. This article shows you how you can easily get started. Don’t just think of meditation as something that you can investigate when you have the time. There is good evidence that engaging in a regular meditation practice can enhance your attention and mental efficiency.
Limit Multitasking
Multitasking used to be considered a superpower. But now we know that when people multitask, they often make more mistakes. And because of inefficiency, it may actually take longer to get tasks done than if each one was done separately. That’s especially likely if both tasks require mental energy, rather than rote memory.
By focusing on one task at a time, you may improve the quality of your work, reduce the cognitive load, and actually save time.
If you have tasks that are time-consuming and not realistically amenable to completion in one sitting, break them down into smaller, more manageable steps. That way you can think of each step as a separate and achievable task. It can be helpful to write each of these sub-tasks out and check it off the list when it’s completed.
As you knock out these smaller to-dos, you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment. That can reduce the attention residue that builds up when you stress about unfinished work.
Set Boundaries
It’s not surprising that research has found that interruptions increase the likelihood of errors, which may put your patients at risk.
What’s more, these unwanted intrusions also impact your own mental well-being, provoking measurably high levels of anxiety and annoyance.
Ideally, set clear boundaries with colleagues, staff, and patients regarding when you are available for interruptions.
When practical, limit social and nonessential chatter when you’re focused on something that requires deep thought or careful consideration. Reading studies, creating notes, reviewing charts, and developing treatment plans all fall into this category.
Use simple visual cues, like a closed door or a "Do Not Disturb Unless Urgent" sign. Distractions can’t all be eliminated, but taking these and other attention-preserving actions will likely build awareness and respect for your focused time.
It can also be helpful to set expectations with patients and staff that non-urgent in-box messages will only be addressed during or after certain hours of the day.
Conclusion
Maintaining mental focus requires practical, intentional strategies and consistent effort. By experimenting with some or all of the steps I’ve listed above, you will enhance your ability to concentrate, manage interruptions, and reduce attention residue.
Developing these practices will not only improve your productivity but also contribute to better patient care and support your own vital well-being.
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