Exploring teams of learners becoming “WE” in the Intensive Care Unit – a focused ethnographic study

BACKGROUND: Research about collaboration within teams of learners in intensive care is sparse, as is research on how the learners in a group develop into a team. The aim of this study was to explore the collaboration in teams of learners during a rotation in an interprofessional education unit in intensive care from a sociocultural learning perspective. METHODS: Focused Ethnographic methods were used to collect data following eight teams of learners in 2009 and 2010. Each team consisted of one resident, one specialist nurse student and their supervisors (n = 28). The material consisted of 100 hours of observations, interviews, and four hours of sound recordings. A qualitative analysis explored changing patterns of interplay through a constant comparative approach. RESULTS: The learners’ collaboration progressed along a pattern of participation common to all eight groups with a chronological starting point and an end point. The progress consisted of three main steps where the learners’ groups developed into teams during a week’s training. The supervisors’ guided the progress by gradually stepping back to provide latitude for critical reflection and action. CONCLUSION: Our main conclusion in training teams of learners how to collaborate in the intensive care is the crucial understanding of how to guide them to act like a team, feel like a team and having the authority to act as a team.