Traditional surgical training has focused on the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge with minimal focus on teaching nontechnical skills. Patient safety depends on both technical and nontechnical skills, with a higher rate of non-technical skills failure leading to patient harm. Many surgical training and regulatory bodies have incorporated nontechnical skills in the required competencies of a surgeon, but few have introduced formal training in nontechnical skills. Emerging research shows simulation-based education to be a powerful tool to teach nontechnical skills to individual surgeons and surgeons in training, and to interprofessional surgical teams with subsequent improvement of patient safety outcomes.

传统的外科培训侧重于获取技术技能和知识，而很少关注教授非技术技能。患者安全取决于技术和非技术技能，非技术技能失败导致患者伤害的比率更高。许多外科培训和监管机构已将非技术技能纳入外科医生所需的能力中，但很少引入正式的非技术技能培训。新兴研究表明，基于模拟的教育是一种强大的工具，可以向个体外科医生和接受培训的外科医生教授非技术技能，并向跨专业手术团队传授非技术技能，从而改善患者安全结果。