Table 1.

Codebook and Exemplar Quotes

Code	Definition	Exemplar Quote
Elicitation of parental concerns	Medical team attempt to bring up topics of parental concern, worries, or fears	“What are you worried about?” (CICU Physician)
Assessment of parental understanding	Medical team attempt to clarify or confirm parental knowledge of disease and treatment	“Tell me what you understand about your child’s illness?” (CICU Physician)
Asking parent(s) how much information they want to know	Medical team attempt to find out how much information a parent wants to know about a given topic	“I have the results from the last imaging; how much detail would you like me to go into?” (CICU Physician)
Closed-ended question	Question that can be answered with a “yes” or “no”	“Does all of this make sense to you so far?” (CICU Physician)
Open-ended question	Question that allows a wide range of possible answers	“What questions do you have for me?” (CICU Physician)
Empathic opportunity	Parent explicitly or implicitly expresses emotion	“I’s definitely scary [to hold my baby].” (Parent)
Empathic terminator	In response to an empathic opportunity, the medical team changes the topic, makes a joke, denies the paren’s emotion, or ends the conversation (Active response; does not include nonresponse)	“I’m just kind of like nervous now about Friday, I’m like ’AHH!!’ you know, but we’ll figure it out.” (Parent)
		“No, it’ll be some good data I think that will help everybody make some decisions.” (CICU Physician)
Empathic response to empathic opportunity	Medical team uses an “I wish” statement; names paren’s emotion; shows understanding of paren’s emotion; communicates respect or praise; shows support; or explores paren’s emotion	“I’s hard. A lot of people don’ realize that babies are born with any problems, let alone a complex heart problem that needs some time to figure out.” (Nurse Manager)
Team elicits questions from family	Team asks whether the parent has a question or indicates an openness to answering questions	“Any questions so far?” (CICU Physician)
Parent asks a question of the medical team	Question asked by parent	“So if they find that out, are they still going to do the bronchoscopy?” (Parent)
Discussion of medical information	All medical details pertaining to the patien’s current acute illness, including symptoms and prognosis, as well as chronic and past medical conditions, treatments, family medical history, and health screening	“There have been times when she’s collapsed part of the left lung, as well.” (CICU Physician)
Rapport building	Use of casual humor or kindness to put parents at ease	“The nurses love [your son.] They fight over [your son]! [Laughter]” (Nurse Manager)
Encouraging family involvement in care	Team encourages parents or other family members to be more involved in (medical or overall) care of the patient	“Do you feel comfortable with the nursing care and working with the nurses to care for the baby? Cause we want to get you to do more of her care …” (Social Worker)
Clarifying procedures and processes of communication	Explanation of who to contact and/or how to contact them in the event of conflict or confusion; or the hierarchy of staff in the CICU and how to interact with it	“Everyday, 24/7, there’s a charge nurse, so if you feel like you need to speak to someone besides the bedside nurse there’s a charge nurse here all the time. And then during the day, during the week, there’s usually someone here from leadership if you want to talk to someone.” (Nurse Manager)
Addressing parental needs and resources	Comments or questions about the logistics or psychosocial complexity of the parent/family’s current situation or future needs	“Are you guys still okay staying at the hotel? I know we spoke early on about the Ronald McDonald house.” (Social Worker)
Facilitation of meeting discussion	Team member begins meeting, plans future discussion, or prompts other team members to speak	“Did you want to talk about early intervention?” (Social Worker)