Learning health 'safety' within non-technical skills interprofessional simulation education: a qualitative study

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Education
• Patient Safety Research
• Simulation-Based Learning

Background:

• Healthcare increasingly emphasizes 'safe practice' and 'patient safety'.
• Non-technical skills (NTS) training, focusing on communication and teamwork, is widely adopted in healthcare education.
• NTS frameworks are central to improving healthcare professionals' performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify how interprofessional simulation learning contexts influence NTS acquisition.
• To explore the development of 'safety' among healthcare learners in simulation environments.
• To understand the impact of simulation on NTS and safety.

Main Methods:

• Focus group interviews with participants of an NTS safety-focused training package.
• Exploration of communication, teamwork, and safety within simulated learning experiences.
• Analysis aligned with a constructivist paradigm using open, axial, and selective coding with constant comparisons.

Main Results:

• Six themes emerged: analytical skills, personal behaviors, communication, teamwork, context, and pedagogy.
• Two principal concepts identified: intergroup contact anxiety and teamwork, both context-dependent.
• A framework for NTS learning was proposed based on these concepts.

Conclusions:

• Intergroup contact anxiety and teamwork significantly influence NTS behavior and are mitigated by interprofessional simulation learning.
• NTS education should prioritize these affective attributes for improved safe behavior.
• Further research is needed on affective non-technical attributes in NTS education and safe behavior determinants.