New state legal requirements prompted the separation of all Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and intermediate rooms within OSF St. Francis Medical Center. Neurological, surgical and medical ICU rooms were all moved to the fourth floor of the hospital’s Gerlach building to comply with these standards. One new implication of these changes was that all ICU departments were required to share the same spaces. The change in staffing assignments prompted an educational effort to prepare medical staff across disciplines for interacting in the new environment.
Several core competency days occurred for the purpose of helping employees adjust to the new changes. This educational component of the transition incited the Employee and Patient Perceptions of Safety and Teamwork study. The study was designed to measure how both employees and patients processed and adjusted to new circumstances. The study sought to measure three main factors: employee perceptions of a safe working climate, patient perceptions of staff teamwork and a correlation between these two data points.