Every interruption has a cost: distraction, burnout and patient care in the OR

Jake Hoffman, RN · October 2026 · 5 min read

Ask a circulating nurse how many times they were interrupted during their last case and you’ll get a laugh, not a number. The phone, the door, the page, the question that “only takes a second.” Each one is small. Together they shape how the day feels, how the team works, and how safe the patient is.

The research has been measuring this for years, and it tells a consistent story: interruptions wear nurses down, worn-down nurses deliver less safe care, and the whole room’s workflow pays for it.

The OR runs on interruptions

Antoniadis and colleagues observed surgical teams being distracted or interrupted 9.8 times per hour. In robotic-assisted prostatectomies, Koch and colleagues counted an average of 66 flow disruptions per case, about 20.5 every hour.

The circulator takes the brunt of it. A 2024 study of 1,015 surgeries recorded 8.7 interruptions per hour during surgical counts alone. Circulating nurses absorbed 48.2% of them, and 90.1% of the interruptions had a negative effect on the task at hand.

Interruptions wear people down

It isn’t just annoying. In a diary study of 133 hospital nurses, Baethge and Rigotti found that interruptions raised time pressure and mental demands, which drove irritation and lowered nurses’ satisfaction with their own work. Interrupted nurses were also more likely to forget something they had meant to do.

Over time that strain becomes burnout. A 2026 study of 261 inpatient nurses found work interruptions were associated with higher burnout, and burnout in turn was linked to nurses wanting to leave. Nationally, the National Academy of Medicine reports that 35% to 54% of U.S. nurses and physicians have substantial symptoms of burnout, and it names technology that disrupts clinical workflow among the system-level causes.

Burnout reaches the patient

Burnout doesn’t stay in the break room. A 2024 meta-analysis in JAMA Network Open pooled 85 studies covering 288,581 nurses in 32 countries. Higher nurse burnout was associated with lower patient safety ratings, more medical errors, more adverse events and more hospital-acquired infections, along with lower quality of care and patient satisfaction.

Interruptions also cause harm directly. On hospital wards, Westbrook and colleagues watched 4,271 medication administrations and found each interruption was associated with a 12.7% increase in clinical errors. With four interruptions, the risk of a major error doubled, from 2.3% to 4.7%.

And the workflow breaks down

Every interruption pulls a nurse out of one task and into another. In the 2024 counting study, nurses responded to interruptions immediately 64% of the time, pausing the count to deal with them. Koch’s team found that equipment- and patient-related disruptions measurably increased staff workload. In cardiac surgery, Wiegmann and colleagues found that teamwork and communication failures were the strongest predictor of adverse outcomes.

The pattern is the same everywhere you look. Interruptions fragment the work, fragmented work strains the team, a strained team burns out, and the patient is the one on the table when it all comes together.

Where StaffAware comes in

Not every interruption can be removed from an operating room. But the ones that can be removed should be, and the communication that has to happen should happen without pulling people away from the patient.

StaffAware sees this, and we’ve built a way to reduce distractions and improve communication.

Jake Hoffman, RN, is a CVOR nurse and the founder of StaffAware.