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Lukasz M. Mazur, PhD, along with a team of UNC researchers, has been published in JAMIA: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The paper, “Towards a Better Understanding of Task Demands, Workload, and Performance during Physician-Computer Interactions,” found that physicians are likely to make omission errors when using electronic medical records (EMRs).

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Lukasz Mazur is an assistant professor a Department of Radiation Oncology at UNC School of Medicine and an adjunct assistant professor in the UNC School of Global Public Health.

Lukasz M. Mazur, PhD, was first author of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The study, “Towards a Better Understanding of Task Demands, Workload, and Performance during Physician-Computer Interactions,” assessed the relationship between clinical task demands, workload and performance to allow providers to develop safer electronic medical record systems for better care.

Mazur said the study’s findings findings suggest that physicians are likely to make omission errors during interactions with electronic medical records (EMRs). The researchers believe that this performance degradation is most likely caused by high task demands.

“It is widely believed that EMRs, when used appropriately, can enhance care quality and patient safety,” Mazur said. “However, interactions with EMRs are relatively complex, requiring physicians to sustain their attention to details under high task demands. The relationship between task demands and errors has not been widely studied in medicine, and our results indicate that there might be systematic issues with physician-EMR interactions that can negatively affect care quality and patient safety.”

Mazur is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at UNC School of Medicine. He is also an adjunct assistant professor in the UNC School of Global Public Health and UNC and NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering.

In addition to Mazur, other authors from UNC include: , , , , , , ,, ,

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