0136 Can Clinical Simulation Fellowship Help In Development Of Non Technical Skills (nts)?

Abstract

Background Non-technical skills are the cognitive, social and personal resource skills that complement technical skills.1 There is increasing empirical evidence linking non technical skills to patient safety.2 Poor performance of non technical skills has been shown to be a significant contributor to medical error.3 Objective Hull institute of learning and simulation offers Leadership Fellowship training programs in Simulation. To prepare the fellows for the post, we provide formal training in NTS. We explored fellows perceptions of changes in their non technical skills performance using a non technical skills questionnaire. Methods We followed seven Fellows over a period of one year. Non technical questionnaire was given at the start of training. They rated their non technical skills, based on Likert scale, on leadership, management, interpersonal effectiveness, teamwork, assertiveness, communication, time management, influencing, negotiation and engagement. Questionnaire was repeated at the end of year for comparison. Results The questionnaires revealed that the fellows particularly lacked confidence in leadership, assertiveness, time management and influencing at the beginning and this improved by the year end. There was particular increase in confidence levels in leadership (p = 0.216), time management (p = 0.103) and communication (p = 0.154) using chi square test. All Fellows felt that this post has helped them develop non technical skills which can be transferred to their future clinical work place. Conclusion We have demonstrated that registrars perceive a lack of confidence in key NTS such as leadership, assertiveness and time management. Over a period of year with focused training, NTS performance can improve. We believe that our experience can be adapted and used to embed formal training in NTS in the curriculum. We acknowledge there are limitations to our results as it is perceptions not actual improvement. But it can form basis for future research in this area. References Flin R, O’Connor R, Crichton M. Safety at the Sharp End: A Guide to Non-TechnicalSkills. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008 Flowerdew L, Brown R, Vincent C, et al. Identifying non-technical skills associated with safety in the emergency department: a scoping review of the literature. Ann Emerg Med 2012;59:386–94 Andersen PO, Jensen MK, Lippert A, et al. Identifying non-technical skills and barriers for improvement of teamwork in cardiac arrest teams. Resuscitation 2010;81:695–70