Midwifery students' and obstetricians' perception of training in non-technical skills

Abstract

Abstract Purpose: Training in non-technical skills is increasingly recommended in the health sector. We set up an original training course, for student midwives and obstetricians, in which successful performance depended on the acquisition of non-technical skills. The main objective was to find out how they perceived the training and to investigate whether their position changed after it by analysing their social representations. Materials and methods: The simulation session consisted of a flight in a simulator. A questionnaire was given to participants before the session (T1), after it (T2) and later (T3). It included a stress scale, a free association task, and open-ended questions about the training. We used the Descending Hierarchical Classification method to highlight groups of individuals who tended to answer the questionnaire in the same way. Results: A total of 46 people participated in the experiment. The dynamics of the similarity analyses showed changes in emphasis according to the different times: at T1: team, plane, simulation; at T2: communication, team, stress; and at T3: team, communication, simulation, tunnelling. Conclusions: Participants expressed their professionalization by the acquisition of technical vocabulary, as well as by using a semantic register pertaining to teamwork and thinking about actions undertaken.