Effect of a Nontechnical Skills Intervention on First-Year Student Registered Nurse Anesthetists' Skills During Crisis Simulation.

Abstract

Simulation-based education provides a safe place for student registered nurse anesthetists to practice non-technical skills before entering the clinical arena. An anesthetist's lack of nontechnical skills contributes to adverse patient outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether an educational intervention on nontechnical skills could improve the performance of nontechnical skills during anesthesia crisis simulation with a group of first-year student registered nurse anesthetists. Thirty-two first-year students volunteered for this quasi-experimental study. Each subject was videotaped and rated as he or she performed 6 simulated crisis scenarios: 3 scenarios before the intervention and 3 after the intervention. Findings revealed that the nontechnical skills mean posttest score was greater than pretest scores: t (df = 31) = 1.99, P = .028. The mean gain in scores for standardized nontechnical skills were significantly greater than those for standardized technical skills: t (df = 30) = 1.81, P = .04. In conclusion, a 3-hour educational intervention on nontechnical skills resulted in significant improvement. Nontechnical skills therefore are not acquired through experience, but rather through instruction. An educational intervention using the Anaesthetists' Non-Technical Skills system is a valuable tool in the measurement of nontechnical skills assessment of first-year student registered nurse anesthetists.