Background: Aiming for and ensuring effective patient safety is a major priority in the
management and culture of every health care organization. The pediatric intensive care unit
(PICU) has become a workplace with a high diversity of multidisciplinary physicians and
professionals. Therefore, delivery of high-quality care with optimal patient safety in a PICU is
dependent on effective interprofessional team management. Nevertheless, ineffective interprofessional
teamwork remains ubiquitous.
Methods: We based our review on the framework for interprofessional teamwork recently
published in association with the UK Centre for Advancement of Interprofessional Education.
Articles were selected to achieve better understanding and to include and translate new ideas
and concepts.
Findings: The barrier between autonomous nurses and doctors in the PICU within their silos
of specialization, the failure of shared mental models, a culture of disrespect, and the lack of
empowering parents as team members preclude interprofessional team management and patient
safety. A mindset of individual responsibility and accountability embedded in a network of
equivalent partners, including the patient and their family members, is required to achieve
optimal interprofessional care. Second, working competently as an interprofessional team is a
learning process. Working declared as a learning process, psychological safety, and speaking
up are pivotal factors to learning in daily practice. Finally, changes in small steps at the level
of the microlevel unit are the bases to improve interprofessional team management and patient
safety. Once small things with potential impact can be changed in one’s own unit, engagement
of health care professionals occurs and projects become accepted.
Conclusion: Bottom–up patient safety initiatives encouraging participation of every single
care provider by learning effective interprofessional team management within daily practice
may be an effective way of fostering patient safety