Working in interprofessional teams is essenial for optimal patient care in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU). On a daily basis medical and nursing staff shall intensively interact in order to respond to the high needs of the neonatal intensive patient care. Previous research studies demonstrate the fact that such teams function better when issues of safety climate and climate of collaboration are being effectively addressed and prioritized. The relevance of these aspects in their everyday work among employees of the NICU team reflects the importance given to the issue from the leading dyad of the NICU ward, the medical director and the nursing manager.

Our study aims to investigate and enlighten the importance of the interaction within the leading dyad for the work in the NICU and the relevance of this cooperation for the quality of patient care provided, as well as the study of the individual leadership skills, the affective configurations and the goal congruence of goals of the dyads of NICU leaders as factors influencing the issues of safety climate and climate for collaboration among the NICU team members.

Background

Stakeholders from the political and scientific field have recently addressed a series of issues regarding the work in NICU, including the least number of physicians, nurses but also the minimal infrastructure needed to provide neonatal intensive care of high quality (IQWiG 2008). This optimal health care can only be provided when this adequate number of medical and nursing staff is being motivated to cooperate inter-professionally and interact intensively, while structural organizational issues of the NICU play also an important role. Therefore there is need to explore the informal characteristics of the organizational context, as well as the interaction of the individual actors within the NICU, that may positively regulate the quality of health care provided.

Research question and research model

Research question

Do the leadership skills, as well as the relational emotions and the congruence of goals within the NICU leading dyads influence the Safety Climate and Climate for Collaboration among the NICU staff - and thus on the quality of health care provided in the NICU?

Research Model