Texting While Doctoring: A Patient Safety Hazard

Texting while driving is associated with a 23-fold in-creased risk for crashing (1) and is illegal in most states (2). Using a cell phone while driving reduces the amount of brain activity devoted to driving by 37 % (3). Multitask-ing is dangerous—cognitive scientists have shown that en-gaging in a secondary task disrupts primary task perfor-mance (3). Might physician typing into electronic health records pose similar risks? As when driving, physicians also need to be alert to environmental cues and unexpected turns. Multi-tasking can undermine the core activities of observation, communication, problem solving, and developing trusting relationships. Although it can be argued that texting is unrelated to the task of driving and that typing may be part of the patient care process, we believe the issue of distrac-tion is nonetheless relevant, especially given the realities of