Psychological Safety in Intensive Care Unit Rounding Teams

Rationale: Psychological safety is the condition by which members of an organization feel safe to voice concerns and take risks. Although psychological safety is an important determinant of team performance, little is known about its role in the intensive care unit (ICU). Objectives: To identify the factors associated with psychological safety and the potential influence of psychological safety on team performance in critical care. Methods: We performed daily surveys of healthcare providers in 12 ICUs within an integrated health system over a 2-week period. Survey domains included psychological safety, leader familiarity, leader inclusiveness, role clarity, job strain, and teamwork. These data were linked to daily performance on lung-protective ventilation and spontaneous breathing trials. We used regression models to examine the antecedents of psychological safety as well as the influence of psychological safety on both perceived teamwork and actual performance. Results: We received 553 responses from 270 unique providers. At the individual provider level, higher leader inclusiveness (adjusted beta = 0.32; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24 to 0.41) and lower job strain (adjusted beta = -0.07, 95% CI, -0.13 to -0.02) were independently associated with greater psychological safety. Higher psychological safety was independently associated with greater perception of teamwork (adjusted beta = 0.30; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.36). There was no association between team psychological safety and performance on either spontaneous breathing trials (incident rate ratio for each 1-unit change in team psychological safety, 0.85; 95% CI, 0.81 to 1.10) or lung-protective ventilation (incident rate ratio, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.57 to 1.04). Conclusions: Psychological safety is associated with several modifiable factors in the ICU but is not associated with actual use of evidence-based practices.

Automated summary

Higher leader inclusiveness and lower job strain at the individual level were independently associated with greater psychological safety. Greater psychological safety was independently associated with stronger perception of teamwork, but not with actual performance of evidence-based practices.