Teaching non-technical skills for emergency care: perceptions of professors of Medicine

Abstract: Introduction: Emergency situations require rapid response and decisions by the physician, who must articulate technical skills, such as knowledge and clinical skills for the diagnosis, and non-technical skills, such as leadership and teamwork, to provide safe care. Objective: To know the medical faculty’s perceptions on the teaching of non-technical skills for emergency care in the context of an undergraduate medical course. Method: Qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study developed with 24 medical teachers of a medical course in the implementation phase. Data collection was performed through interviews, using a semi-structured script, recorded in audio, with the participants’ consent. Thematic analysis was used for the data analysis. Results: the analysis of the interviews allowed the construction of two themes: “Teaching urgency and emergency: a reproduction of procedures” and “The transition of rationalities in teaching non-technical skills for emergency care”, with the subthemes, “Non-technical skills: however much I teach you, you will not learn” and “It is possible to develop non-technical skills”. Conclusions: In the studied group, a technicist vision stands out, emphasizing technical and procedural teaching to assist emergency situations. However, different conceptions of teaching and learning coexist, indicating a transition of rationalities that permeates the teachers’ understanding. The need for proposals for the continuing development of the faculty is emphasized, allowing critically rethinking the conceptions of learning in the field of emergencies, especially in the context of new undergraduate medical courses.