Teaching and Evaluating Nontechnical Skills for General Surgery.

Surgical training programs have long used quantitative measures of knowledge, as well as subjective evaluation of technical skills, to define the competence of trainees. However, a growing body of literature has shown the importance of nontechnical surgical skills as vital components of quality surgical care. Institutions must train nontechnical surgical skills, including leadership, communication, teamwork, situational awareness, and decision making, and incorporate these attributes into their evaluative processes to maximally enhance surgical performance at every career stage.