Nonsurgical Skills
Mastery of non-technical skills (NTS) such as communication, teamwork, situational awareness, and decision-making is critical to surgical training, but challenging in a remote learning environment. Multiple behavioral rating systems have been developed as frameworks for teaching and competency-based assessment of non-technical surgical skills. The Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons (NOTSS) system, Oxford NOTECHS II, and Observational Teamwork Assessment for Surgery (OTAS) have been widely employed across a range of surgical disciplines and environments (Flin R., 2012) (Robertson et al., 2014) (Javia & Sardesai, 2017). Although NTS assessment is most often employed in clinical settings, it can also be adapted to surgical simulations (Magill & Tolley, 2020). Notably for head and neck surgical trainees, NTS training can be an integral component of simulated surgical emergencies (Wu, Kim, Fung, & Roth, 2018).