title: Notes From the Field: Changes in the Attentional Capacity and Emotional State of Physicians After Working at Busy Outpatient Clinics.
abstract: To examine changes in the performance of physicians after working in busy outpatient clinics, we conducted a prospective study, involving full-time clinicians who held morning and afternoon outpatient clinics on the same day. The participants completed three measures of attention, the psychomotor vigilance task, two-back test, and trail-making test, and a measure of emotion, the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI), before and after the two clinic sessions. The physicians saw a mean of 91.3 patients in the two outpatient clinics on the day of testing. Overall, performance in the attention test did not deteriorate after the two successive outpatient sessions. However, we observed an increased STAXI score in 24 (54.3%) participants and saw a significant overall increase in STAXI scores. Our results indicate that busy outpatient sessions may increase physicians' anger although their attentional capacity appears to be maintained.
authors.affiliation: Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yeon Joo
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sun Mi
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.affiliation: Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Ju Hee
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea yimjj@snu.ac.kr.
authors.forename: Jae-Joon
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Yim
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D001288:Attention; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D016526:Workload
keywords: attention; emotional change; outpatient clinic; physician; workload