Challenges and Opportunities for Applying Human Factors Methods to the Development of Nontechnical Skills in Healthcare Education

The long-term success of recent efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care systems will require the systematic development of non-technical skills, particularly teamwork, in care providers. More specifically, there is a need to formally integrate the non-technical skills needed for providing effective care into the full continuum of medical education, from the earliest stages of acquiring basic technical skill and knowledge to supporting professional development of practicing care providers. However, there are many challenges associated with meeting this objective. This paper proposes that Human Factors concepts and tools developed for training teamwork skills in a variety of safety-critical domains can provide partial solutions to some of the challenges faced by the medical education community. To that end, this paper 1) provides an overview of the current state of non-technical skill development for medical professionals, 2) summarizes important methods and tools in simulation-based training for teams, 3) discusses how these Human Factors strategies could be applied across the continuum of medical education as well as significant challenges to doing so, and 4) details a set of key needs for the moving forward.