Why Doctors Shouldn't Multitask

Western society is all about multitasking to maximize effciency, but medical doctors should not engage in this practice because it lowers productivity and quality of care.

This blog discusses why multitasking is harmful to patients and why the brain isn't equipped to handle multitasking. Additionally, this blog suggests some steps to increase productivity/quality of care and reduce the temptation to multitask.

If you are a medical doctor running your own practice, you have an enormous responsibility on your shoulders. Not only are you responsible for providing quality care to your many managing your practice. As a result, you might be tempted to resort to multitasking in an attempt to manage your heavy workload in a shorter amount of time.

Contrary to popular belief, multitasking can backfire, and dividing your attention as a doctor can lead to a decline both in quality of care and productivity. Below are ways multitasking is harmful in terms of both medical management and practice management and how you can avoid the temptation to multitask.

It's Not How the Brain Works

The human brain just isn't wired to handle multiple tasks at one time. It prefers to concentrate exclusively on one task before moving on to the next. When you jump from one task to another, you interrupt those cognitive processes as your brain loses focus and has to take time to re-focus on a new task.

This hurts productivity because when you engage in multitasking, it actually takes longer for you to complete tasks than if you focused on one task at a time as your brain prefers. It can also harm your relationship with your patient as it takes longer for you to see them, making them feel that their time isn't being valued.

It's distracting tasks at hand, multitasking is actually highly distracting, leaving you to focus more attention on one task than on others. This is why distracted driving is considered just as dangerous as (if not more than) drunk driving-instead of focusing all of their attention on the road, the driver's attention is distracted.

The same applies to multitasking with patients. When you are multitasking, you aren't focusing your entire attention on your patient, which can cause you to miss important details such as allergies to certain medications. Such a distraction can harm not only your patient but also your practice.

When you are trying to force your brain to process tasks in a way it's not wired to do, you end up more distracted and complete tasks more slowly as a reality. The end result is that multitasking lowers the quality of your work. This can have a negative impact even on the doctor/patient relationship.

First, patients can sense when you aren't focusing your full attention on their needs. They can start to feel that you, as their medical doctor, view them more like a series of numbers on a chart rather than a living, breathing person.

Second, they know that when you are distracted you can miss important details, resulting in a lack of trust, the cornerstone of a doctor/patient relationship.

Multitasking can also lower the quality of your work in practice management. You might not realize that you aren't taking as much time as you otherwise would to double-check your numbers and you can miss steps that you otherwise would have remembered, resulting in reduced productivity in your practice. Multitasking is a hard habit to break, no matter how much data you have on how ineffective it really is.