Table 4.

Facilitators of Interprofessional Collaboration in the Intensive Care Unit.

Domain	Type	Illustrative Quote
Structural facilitators	Clinical protocols	Protocolized care keeps, you know, it keeps everybody on the same page at the same time. Everybody practices the same quality of care and the delivery of care. (Dietician)
	Checklists	We do have certain criteria that we look at every day when we make our rounds, we look at certain things. We look at best practices and so we have somebody who's a surgical patient look at the best practices and make sure that those goals are being met (Nurse Manager).
	Daily rounds	We do almost daily rounds with our director of ICU and if not daily, about at least three times a week he reviews all the patients, even if they are not his. We round with usually the nurse manager, the case manager, the dietician, a pharmacist, sometimes a physical therapists, a respiratory therapist. We try to get whoever is around in the unit and everybody kind of has their input on the patient. (Nurse Manager). We have rounds on our ventilated patients, we follow the VHA guidelines, so we look to make sure the head of the bed is elevated, that the patient is on DVT prophylaxis, we make sure if they're on a vent if they're able to wean that we are doing weaning on them.(Nurse Manager)
	Information technology	Computerized meds, which is great, because if a physician enters an order there's been times the pharmacy has called and said that this dose is too high or this will interact with that medication. (Staff Nurse) They actually come with their laptop and they have all the meds readily available, what the patient's on, so they can look down and we discuss…. Because a nurse can't always remember, because everything's on the computer now.(Staff Nurse)
Cultural facilitators	Accessibility	I think that when you're available to them visibly, when you're right there they like it a lot. (Clinical Pharmacist) They're at the rounds, they have their patient profiles in front of them, so they're always helpful, you know, to suggest maybe this versus this or maybe you should change the antibiotic to something else or whatever and to have them on the floor is just awesome because if you have a question there's somebody right there. (Staff Nurse)
	Trust	There's not that many of us, so it helps that they know…. If they trust you they'll call, you know, they'll not afraid to call us to come. (Respiratory Therapist) So most of the time like I could tell after working here in the ICU for a long time, so everybody respects what I say and I always talk to the doctors because, I'm not a doctor, so I just tell them this is what I think. (Respiratory Therapist) Just being able to communicate effectively and have rapport with them. I think having… it's a personality issues, I really do believe that. (Nurse Manager)
	Value	You want to be able to recognize minimal changes for good or bad, so you're really dependent on your co-workers. Communication, I think is okay; people aren't really afraid to speak up and tell each other how they feel, what they think. (Staff Nurse) I think a lot of them, you know, them involving the nurse in the actual care, you know, and valuing their opinion and asking them questions, you know. When they just come in and review the chart and just ignore what a nurse has done for twenty-four hours for their patient, but, you know, there seems to be communication between some of them, asking them what they think and how was their night. (Nurse Manager)
	Leadership	I would say that the climate here is patient focused, the intent for care delivery is, has a high level of integrity. Our number one hospital goal is patient safety. We take our employees very seriously. (Nurse Manager) The administrators here have patient safety in mind, that's definitely a priority. They have the patient, like best practices, like DVT prophylaxis, GI prophylaxis, glycemic control, and they monitor all that. And when they see that there's a breakdown in the system they try to come up with processes to improve it. (Clinical Pharmacist)

Notes. ICU = intensive care unit; VHA =Voluntary Hospital Association, Inc. (Irving TX); DVT = deep vein thrombosis; GI = gastrointestinal.