Abstract

An examination of assessment tools used worldwide to evaluate surgical trainees’ non-technical skills yields an understanding that no one particular tool is sufficient in and of itself. An ideal assessment tool could benefit from the approach utilized in procedure-based assessments. The importance of this work is two-fold. The first is to examine how assessment of surgical trainees’ proficiency in the essential Roles is currently done. The second is to suggest possible improvement to ensure high quality standards are being met in surgical training curricula at the graduate and possibly the undergraduate medicine levels.