Interprofessional team interactions about complex care in the ICU: pilot development of an observational rating tool

BACKGROUND: The awakening and breathing coordination, delirium, and early mobility (ABCDE) bundle is a multicomponent complex intervention that improves outcomes for critically ill adults yet is inconsistently implemented. Effective interprofessional team function (how the team interacts) is key to ABCDE delivery but little is known about how to measure team interactions. The purpose of our study was to examine the reliability of an observational rating tool to assess team interactions about ABCDE in one ICU. RESULTS: We pilot tested and evaluated reliability of an observational rating tool to assess team interactions about ABCDE. Two independent raters used this tool in one medical ICU over 4 weeks during morning rounds. We examined which ABCDE components were addressed, which team members initiated interactions, and which participated in interactions about ABCDE. We evaluated inter-rater reliability using Cohen’s kappa statistic and data from interprofessional team interactions for 23 patients. We demonstrated moderate to substantial reliability for whether breathing, coordination, delirium or early mobility were addressed (k = 0.48–0.78) and slight to fair reliability for which team members initiated interactions about ABCDE (0.18–0.40). Reliability was low for whether Awakening was addressed (k = −0.07) and for which team members initiated interactions about awakening (k = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides pilot evidence of reliability of an observational rating tool to assess interprofessional team interactions about ABCDE. Future work should further test and modify this tool to gain an understanding of how to use team interactions to improve ABCDE delivery. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13104-016-2213-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.