Assessing the Team SA Instrument in Measuring the Effectiveness of Communication Across Disciplines During ICU Rounds

Assessing the Utility of the Team SA Instrument in Measuring the Effectiveness of Communication Across Disciplines During ICU Rounds

Assessing the utility of the Team SA instrument in measuring the effectiveness of communication across disciplines during ICU rounds.

Multidisciplinary rounds are events that occur daily in Intensive care units. During these events, practitioners from multiple disciplines meet at a pre-specified time to discuss current medical condition and plans of care. At the conclusion of these discussions, all practitioners are expected to understand the plan of care well enough to execute defined tasks, but also coordinate as circumstances change. In order to coordinate under changing circumstances practitioners must have a broader understanding of the current state of the patient and how likely certain deteriorations are. This synthetic understanding of patient risks across multi-provider groups has been described as anticipatory team situational awareness (Team SA). One instrument has been validated in the ICU as feasible and informative. This Team SA survey successfully identified that the time spent in "training" discussions improved Team SA across physician groups. The investigators' goal is to implement this survey across the investigators' medical ICU service to obtain a baseline estimate of how effective current communication patterns are for achieving concordant Team SA. If gaps in communication are encountered future interventions will be developed

Inclusion Criteria:

• Nurses, primary clinicians (resident or NP) and Critical Care physicians (Staff or Fellow in Critical Care Medicine) will be approached for interview. All subjects will be approached individually and asked to participate outside of the presence of the other potential study subjects.

Exclusion Criteria:

• N/A