Notes From the Field: Changes in the Attentional Capacity and Emotional State of Physicians After Working at Busy Outpatient Clinics

Yeon Joo Lee, Sun Mi Choi, Ju Hee Park, Jae Joon Yim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)423-428
Number of pages6
JournalEvaluation and the Health Professions
Volume38
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Sep 2015

Keywords

  • attention
  • emotional change
  • outpatient clinic
  • physician
  • workload

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