The role of non-technical skills in community pharmacy practice: an exploratory review of the literature

Background Non-technical skills (NTS) are the cognitive and social skills that complement technical skills in safe and efficient practice, and include leadership, teamwork, task management, decision-making and situation awareness. Other areas within healthcare have heavily invested in producing taxonomies to aid training and assessment of NTS within their disciplines, and have found them to be essential for improving patient safety. In pharmacy, no validated taxonomy has been produced, nor has the existing literature been appraised to aid the future development of a validated taxonomy. Objective(s) To examine the literature on NTS within a community pharmacy setting and establish the research conducted thus far on each NTS and how they are applied by community pharmacists. Methods A literature search of six electronic databases (EMBASE, PsychINFO, Medline, SCOPUS, CINAHL Plus and HMIC) using the generic list of NTS identified in previous studies. Only empirical studies were included. Examples of behaviours or skills were extracted and categorised within each NTS. Key findings Seventeen studies were identified that contained one or more examples of NTS specific to community pharmacy practice. Altogether, 16 elements were extracted. Four elements were identified within leadership and task management. A further three were identified within situation awareness and decision-making, and a final two within teamwork and communication. Conclusion A framework consisting of the skills and how they're applied has been presented which describe the NTS required by community pharmacists from the published literature. This framework can provide a foundation for further investigation into NTS use within pharmacy practice.