article_snippet: One further problem facing the health profession is that when a doctor or nurse faces a patient, a doctor or nurse right-side is on the patient's left-side.
article_snippet: In research we published in Medical Education, we explored the impact of such interruptions on medical students' ability to correctly discriminate right from left.
article_snippet: While objectively measuring 234 medical students' ability to distinguish right from left, we subjected 234 medical students' to the typical ambient noise of a ward environment and interrupted 234 medical students' with clinical questions.
article_snippet: Previous research found when medical students were distracted by the noise of a ward and clinical questions, medical students ability to make right-left judgments was thrown off .
article_snippet: Even the background noise of a ward environment was enough to throw some medical students off when making right-left judgements.
article_snippet: Asking some medical students a series of questions while some medical students were trying to distinguish right from left had an even greater impact.
article_snippet: In healthcare, training – starting at an undergraduate level – needs to make students mindful of the challenges of making right-left decisions and the impact that distractions can have on such critical decisions.