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  • What non-technical skills competencies are addressed by Australian standards documents for health professionals who work in secondary and tertiary clinical settings? A qualitative comparative analysis

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Medical education and training
Research
What non-technical skills competencies are addressed by Australian standards documents for health professionals who work in secondary and tertiary clinical settings? A qualitative comparative analysis
  1. Monica Peddle1,
  2. Margaret Bearman2,
  3. Natalie Radomski3,
  4. Lisa Mckenna1,
  5. Debra Nestel4
  1. 1 School of Nursing and Midwifery, College of Science Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia
  2. 2 Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE), Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  3. 3 Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  4. 4 Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash Institute for Health and Clinical Education, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Ms Monica Peddle; m.peddle{at}latrobe.edu.au

Abstract

Objectives At minimum, safe patient outcomes are recognised as resulting from a combination of technical and non-technical skills. Flin and colleagues provide a practical framework of non-technical skills, cognitive, social and interpersonal, that complement technical skills, with categories identified as situational awareness, communication, team working, decision-making, leadership, coping with stress and managing fatigue. The aim of this research was to explore the alignment of categories and elements of non-technical skills with those in the published standards documents of several health professions in Australia.

Design A qualitative comparative analysis using document analysis and deductive coding examined, extracted and interpreted data from competency standards documents focusing on non-technical skills categories and elements.

Participants A purposive sample of 11 health professions competency standards documents required for registration in Australia.

Findings The 11 competency standards documents contained 1616 statements. Although standards documents addressed all non-technical skills categories, there was limited reporting of managing stress and coping with fatigue. Of the 31 elements included in the non-technical skills framework, 22 were not common to all health professions and 3 elements were missing from the standards documents. Additionally, the documents were composed differently with no common taxonomy and multifaceted statements.

Conclusion While commonalities identified in the standards documents related to non-technical skills categories are likely to support patient safety, gaps in associated elements may undermine their effectiveness. The notable lack of reference to stress and fatigue requires further attention for health professional well-being in Australia. A shared taxonomy with clear statements may offer the best support for collaborative practice and positive patient outcomes. Competency standards need to be flexible to respond to the emerging demands of current healthcare practice along with consumer and health service needs.

  • quality in health care

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020799

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors MP carried out all aspects of the study, including study design, coding for document analysis, interpretation of the data and writing the manuscript. DN, MB and NR supervised the study and contributed to study design, coding and interpretation of the document analysis and the writing of the manuscript. LM contributed to the interpretation of data and writing of the manuscript. The final manuscript has been read and approved by all authors.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional unpublished data is available.