Specific sources of interruptions presented in the study
| Study | Sources of interruptions |
| Brixey et al15 | Telephone, pager, other people and self |
| Dearden et al20 | Phone, forms/prescriptions and other |
| Friedman et al12 | Patient, family, nurses, consulting doctors, emergency department students and house staff, clinical other, technical, administration/page, non-clinical other and personal |
| Healey, Primus et al33 | Conversation, phone, bleeper, equipment, procedure, environment and monitor |
| Healey, Sevdalis et al34 | Phone, bleeper, radio, anaesthetists' case-irrelevant conversation, surgeons' case-irrelevant conversation, nurses' case-irrelevant conversation, communication, external staff, equipment, procedural, environment, movement behind video display monitor and movement in front of video display monitor |
| Hedberg and Larsson10 | Patient, family, assistant nurse, registered nurse, ward physician, ward secretary and noise |
| Laxmisan et al55 | Patients, other staff (attending physicians, nurses, residents, patient, hospital employee, etc), telephone and pagers |
| Pape16 | Medical doctor,61 other person, phone call, other patient, visitor, missing medication, wrong dose medication, emergency situation, external talking or nurse talked and loud noise |
| *Pape et al17 | Physician/nurse practitioner/physicians assistant, other nurse, visitor, other personnel, medication missing or wrong dose present, problem with computer, external conversation or nurse conversed and loud noise |
| Paxton et al22 | Phone and person |
| Peleg et al18 | Telephone calls, entrance of nursing staff, unscheduled patients, physician leaves room, house visits and other |
| Potter et al1 | Telephone call, medication/medical procedure related, inquiries/informs (from unit clerk, registered nurse, doctor, family, nursing office, dietician, staff, general), patient rounds, staff/items/equipment not available or missing, and staff conflict |
| Shvartzman and Antonovsky57 | Nurse, student, physician, patient, maintenance worker, clerical worker and telephone |
| Tucker and Spear41 | Medication, supply items (including food), medical orders, equipment, insufficient staffing, patient related and other |
Those studies not listed in table 3 either did not distinguish interruptions by sources or only focused on one type of interruption source (eg, pager).
↵* Categories were predetermined for use in a questionnaire.