• Posted May 4, 2026

Surgeon Multitasking Increases Death Risk Of Organ Transplantees

MONDAY, May 4, 2026 (HealthDay News) — People undergoing transplants do better if their surgeon isn’t forced to multitask during their daily operations, a new study shows.

Death rates among transplant patients increase by 15% when surgeons switch between different organ types in consecutive surgeries, researchers reported April 30 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Patients are better off when surgeons stick to similar procedures, rather than switching to fundamentally different surgical approaches, researchers found.

“We were surprised by how large the effect was — the performance gap from a single switch was comparable to a meaningful share of the experience gap between newer and more seasoned surgeons,” lead researcher Jiayi Liu, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, said in a news release.

The results provide a clear-cut example of how multitasking affects performance, researchers said.

Nearly all modern workers feel pressure to multitask, but it’s difficult to judge the mental toll of switching focus between objectives, researchers said in background notes. People usually switch tasks because they’re already distracted or overwhelmed, making it tough to tack those feelings specifically on multitasking.

Organ transplants provide an environment to isolate exactly how switching tasks can impact performance, researchers said.

For the new study, Liu and colleagues analyzed more than 300,000 U.S. transplant surgeries between 2007 and 2019.

Switching between different types of organs during a string of transplant surgeries is more common than you might think, occurring in more than 15% of the cases reviewed for the new study, researchers said.

“Most people expect surgeons to specialize in a single organ — but many transplant surgeons perform kidney, liver and pancreas transplants, switching types depending on what arrives,” Liu said. “That raised a natural question: Could those transitions carry a hidden cost?”

Researchers found that when surgeons switched between organ types during consecutive operations — for example, from liver to kidney transplants — patients had a nearly 15% increased risk of death over the next year.

Results also showed that recovery time can help surgeons reset. If doctors were given a day to rest between different types of procedures, the switching penalty was reduced. 

“We found a striking pattern. When a switch occurs on the same day, the mortality rate for those patients rises sharply — from about 4.5% to 7.2%,” Liu said. “If you have even a night to rest between surgeries, the switching cost is much lower, and with two days in between, the effect is essentially gone.”

Experience also matters. Surgeons were less affected by switching if they had more experience with a given organ type or maintained a balanced portfolio across multiple organ types.

The results indicate that using scheduling tools to line up similar surgeries might improve transplant outcomes, researchers concluded. In a pinch where switching is unavoidable, more experienced surgeons should be called upon.

“Most schedules are organized by urgency or convenience, but our findings suggest a more effective principle: grouping tasks by cognitive similarity and giving surgeons longer stretches of focused time on one type,” Liu said.

More information

The American Psychological Association has more on the costs of multitasking.

SOURCES: Virginia Tech, news release, April 30, 2026; Nature Human Behavior, April 30, 2026