title: Changes to physician and nurse time burdens when caring for patients under contact precautions.
abstract: Contact precautions are complex behavioral interventions. To better understand barriers to compliance, we conducted a prospective study that compared the time burden for health care workers caring for contact precautions patients versus other patients. We found that nurses spent significantly more time in the rooms of contact precautions patients. There was no significant change in physician timing. Future studies need to evaluate workflow changes so that barriers to contact precaution implementation can be fully understood and addressed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI.
authors.forename: Anna K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Barker
authors.affiliation: IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Codella
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI.
authors.forename: Tola
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ewers
authors.affiliation: Epic Systems, Verona, WI.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dundon
authors.affiliation: Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI; Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, College of Engineering, Madison, WI.
authors.forename: Oguzhan
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Alagoz
authors.affiliation: Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI; William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital, Madison, WI. Electronic address: ns2@medicine.wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Nasia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Safdar
mesh_terms: D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy*; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000517:prevention & control*; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D009726:Nurses; D010356:Patient Isolation / Q000379:methods*; D010820:Physicians; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Contact isolation; Health care workers; Human factors; Nosocomial infections; Workflow