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Little is known about the nature of interprofessional collaboration on intensive care units (ICUs), despite its recognition as a key component of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives. This comparative ethnographic study addresses this gap in knowledge and explores the different factors that influence collaborative work in the ICU. It aims to develop an empirically grounded team diagnostic tool, and associated interventions to strengthen team-based care and patient family involvement.

BACKGROUND: Poor interprofessional communication in hospital is deemed to cause significant patient harm. Although recognition of this issue is growing, protocols are being implemented to solve this problem without empirical research on the interprofessional communication interactions that directly underpin patient care.

Although effective interprofessional collaboration is a key component of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, little is known about the nature of collaboration in ICU settings. Through ethnographic research, this study will explore interprofessional care in 8 ICUs (6 based in the United States and 2 based in Canada), develop an empirically based readiness/diagnostic tool to assess the quality of team-based care delivery, and develop interventions to strengthen team-based care and patient family involvement.

This article explores and discusses current conceptual and empirical dimensions of the study of space, place, education and interprofessional education (IPE) within a health professions context. This article addresses defining elements of the concepts, their use in nursing and medical literature and their positioning within educational theories. It outlines a series of ideas and approaches for future research aimed at investigating the intersections and relationships amongst these concepts.

At the heart of safe cultures are effective interactions within and between interprofessional teams. Critical care clinicians see severely ill patients who require coordinated interprofessional care. In this scoping review, we asked: "What do we know about processes, relationships, organizational and contextual factors that shape the ability of clinicians to deliver interprofessional care in adult ICUs?" Using the 5-stage process established by Levac et al.

The role of the facilitator is known to be important in fostering productive interprofessional education (IPE) in the face-to-face (F2F) environment. Online learning can help surmount some of the logistical challenges in IPE by bringing together diverse professionals in multiple geographical locations. Best practices in F2F IPE facilitation are beginning to emerge, but there is scant literature examining IPE facilitation online.

INTRODUCTION: Effective teamwork and interprofessional collaboration are vital for healthcare quality and safety; however, challenges persist in creating interprofessional teamwork and resilient professional teams. A study was undertaken to delineate perceptions of individuals involved with the implementation of an interprofessional patient safety competency-based intervention and intervention participants.

The field of interprofessional research has grown both in size and in importance since the 1970s. In this paper, we use a macrosociological approach and a Bourdieusian theoretical framework to investigate this growth and the changing nature of the field's research. We investigate publication trends at the aggregate (field) level, using an original dataset of 100,488 interprofessional-related articles published between 1970 and 2010 and recorded in the PubMed database. Articles were coded using a list of 638 codes that were then analyzed thematically and longitudinally.

Authors have commented on the limited use of theory in the interprofessional field and its critical importance to advancing the work in this field. While social psychological and educational theories in the interprofessional field are increasingly popular, the contribution of organizational and systems theories is less well understood. This paper presents a subset of the findings (those focused on organizational/systems approaches) from a broader scoping review of theories in the organizational and educational literature aimed to guide interprofessional education and practice.

BACKGROUND: The delivery of effective, high-quality patient care is a complex activity. It demands health and social care professionals collaborate in an effective manner. Research continues to suggest that collaboration between these professionals can be problematic. Interprofessional education (IPE) offers a possible way to improve interprofessional collaboration and patient care.