Abstract
Interruptions are a common cause of errors in the pharmacy, cited as being responsible for as much as 43% of the error that occurs in medication administration. The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of interruptions in a hospital pharmacy setting and to determine the extent to which existing theories of interruptions can account for our findings. As a central feature of this work, we chose to examine a characteristic of interruptions seldom examined in laboratory studies, which is the source of the interruption. The findings from this study begin to suggest that the theories developed to explain the cognitive mechanisms by which people resume from interruptions do apply to the pharmacy setting. Further, the data suggest that preservation of the system state has a protective effect on performance.
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