Measuring Non - Technical skills in a Norwegian Air Ambulance medical scenario using the customized rating instrument AeroNOTS.

Abstract

The provision of life aid support to critically ill and injured patients in helicopter emergency medical sevices (HEMS) is a complex process strogly dependent on the team’s non-technical skills to provide sufficient health care.These skills include task management, situation awareness, decisionmaking and teamwork. However there has been a lack of frameworks for measuring such non-technical skills for air amulance personell. In 2015 Julia Myers performed a cuztomisation of the former validated observation tool Aneasthetists Non Technical Skills (ANTS) for use in HEMS called AeroNOTS (aeromedical non- technical skills). In the present study we apply this tool in a simulated clinical setting in Norway, to explore whether the tool is applicable in our environment,assess the tool’s validity, and measure whether NTS improve according to physicians’ experience.