A dedicated multidisciplinary safety briefing for the COVID-19 critical care

Team safety briefings and huddles, in the form of a multidisciplinary short meeting following a predetermined agenda, are extensively used by healthcare organizations, with the scope of improving patient safety by increasing team situational awareness (Franklin et al., 2020; Ryan, 2019). Raising awareness can help increase teamwork; but it’s also fundamental for the prevention of loss of information, efficiency and anticipation and planning, all characteristics at risk in units staffed by a mixture of staff coming from different experience levels and hospital departments (Stapley, 2018). Since the activation of our hospital surge capacity plan on February 24th, 2020 we have increased our intensive care Level 3 capacity to 45 beds, which represents a 200% increase compared to our usual baseline. A careful skill-mix was designed to guarantee balanced levels of experience and expertise, but many found themselves working outside of their comfort zone, at least from a logistical or procedural perspective and also due to the choice or cohorting, which required staff to wear full personal protective equipment for the whole duration of the shift.