Presentation
When Noise Gets into the Notes: Auditory Distraction Effects on Triage Documentation in a Simulated ED Waiting Room
DescriptionEmergency department (ED) waiting rooms have complex soundscapes where nurses complete triage and electronic health record (EHR) documentation amid task-irrelevant sounds. This study examined whether auditory distraction affects documentation accuracy and whether effects depend on noise type and interval pattern. Thirty-two ED nurses completed simulated triage scenarios in the Tesseract, an immersive multimodal simulation environment replicating ED waiting-room conditions. The study included four Noise Types (alarms, infant crying, conversations, quiet baseline), and two Noise Intervals (continuous or intermittent) applied only to the three noisy conditions. A behaviorally anchored error-coding framework with strong interrater reliability was used to assess severity-weighted documentation errors and free-text entry errors. Generalized linear mixed-effects models showed no significant effects of noise on cumulative severity-weighted errors. Free-text entry error frequency showed a significant Noise Type × Noise Interval interaction, χ²(2) = 12.92, p = .002, with conversations producing the highest free-text error counts under continuous presentation and infant crying under intermittent presentation. Post-experiment rankings showed little consensus on which sounds were most distracting, suggesting that perceived distraction did not consistently align with documentation-error patterns. Findings suggest that noise-related errors can be dependent on the momentary ED soundscape, and the documentation processes may be most vulnerable to disruption.
Contributors
Event Type
Lecture
TimeWednesday, October 21st11:20am - 11:40am PDT
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