Combining Anesthesia Non-Technical Skills and peer learning in the operating room

In high-risk work environments, such as nuclear power plants, the aviation industry and healthcare, expertise in nontechnical skills are vital when ensuring the safety of employees and patients. Although these skills are often exhibited by residents, these concepts are taught and learned as tacit but not explicit models of learning. Our research goals with this project were to discover how best to teach non-technical skills to beginner anesthesiologists using the methodology of peer learning. We used two groups (transcript analysis of interviews and focus group methodologies) of residents to gather pilot data so we could begin to understand how peer learning could be implemented when teaching new anesthesiology residents non-technical skills. Interviews were transcribed and the following themes were prevalent: the fast pace between cases and during the case, their role as an autonomous provider or working in teams, dealing with the unexpected and anticipating situations. They also spoke about missing steps and advocating for the use of lists to remember all key points necessary during a case, reacting to changes and interpreting data from the monitor, and reasoning through why a patient would suddenly start to decompensate. Focus group analysis provided a summative debriefing script that can be utilized to train senior residents to provide peer learning for new anesthesiology residents when teaching Anesthesia Non-Technical Skills. Data from both groups showed evidence of how peer learning could be used to teach ANTS.