non technical presentation meaning

How to communicate technical information to a non-technical audience

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Any given project can have a lot of stakeholders, including senior and executive management, employees, stockholders, customers, and so on. These stakeholders are interested in your project, its current status, features and functions, and how it works.

The success or failure of your project might depend on your ability to explain to your stakeholders what the technology in question is, how it is developed and used, and why it will benefit them. It’s important that you get this information right, that you don’t gloss over problem areas, and that the expected outcomes are clear. And if you get buy-in on the project, you’ll have to keep your stakeholders educated, engaged, and up to date on project status.

This might not be as easy as it sounds, especially when you are working with people who have varying degrees of technical knowledge.

So, how do you explain technical concepts to a non-technical audience?

In this article, we will review seven tips that developers, engineers, IT workers, and other technical professionals can use to communicate their ideas more effectively. These can quickly be put into practice in almost any workplace imaginable.

Let’s get started.

1. Know your audience

Before you take any kind of approach, you should think about who your audience is. As you get to know your stakeholders, you’ll get a sense of where they have areas of expertise and the level of their technical knowledge. This way, you won’t waste time explaining stuff they already know or that doesn’t pertain to their role. Is your audience non-techies? Is it a mix of non-technial personnel and fellow technical professionals skilled in other disciplines?

In an audience with different levels of expertise, it’s a balancing act to find the right level of information that is not too simple for more technical team members and is not too complex for those who are less technical. You’ll want to be thoughtful. It’s best to not give the impression that you are oversimplifying for specific members of your audience.

2.  Be attentive to your audience throughout your presentation

Going along with knowing your audience, as you present, be observant of body language and the overall tone of the room. You’ll quickly learn when it’s time to move on and when you need to spend more time on certain information

Whenever you share your technical know-how with a non-technical audience, the goal is to be conversational. Even if you’ve explained the technology dozens of times and know the subject matter inside and out, the people you’re currently talking to might be hearing about it for the first time. Always present with enthusiasm.

3. Incorporate storytelling when sharing technical information 

When you have a lot of data or information to share, take time to allow your audience to wrap their heads around your subject, avoiding the urge to cram every detail on a slide and just reading it aloud. 

If you’re going to use a slide deck to convey your information, remember that every slide should enhance the presentation and not detract from it. Don’t use boring stock photos or charts that fail to express your message clearly and quickly. Think of each slide in the context of how it will guide your audience along the journey from point A to point B. 

As you put together your presentation, always keep your objective or purpose in mind.

To start, what’s the most important takeaway? Are you trying to convince your CMO that no-code platforms for citizen developers will dramatically reduce the product backlog? Or maybe you’re hoping to convince finance that your tech team deserves new equipment? Whatever the situation, storytelling is more persuasive than facts alone.

Stories are effective at planting ideas in the minds of your audience—especially stories told from personal experience. If you don’t have your own relatable or relevant story, use anecdotes taken from recent events or industry publications that fit your needs.

4. Use visuals to explain technical information and processes

Written content and verbal explanations are both essential ways to communicate ideas.

Not surprisingly, many people make regular use of diagrams, models, and other visual presentation techniques to get their point across. If you’re looking for a quick, effective way to visualize and share your content with your organization, there’s Lucidchart.

With its user-friendly templates and interface, you can easily adapt or edit your process workflows to the demands of your non-technical audience. For example, an executive doesn’t necessarily need to review every part of a data flow diagram. They may just want a basic understanding of the structure. With Lucidchart, you can create easy-to-digest diagrams and visuals to share wth stakeholders. Plus, Lucidchart includes Presentation Mode , so you can present the visuals you’ve already put together in Lucidchart without having to transfer anything to a slide deck.

Bonus tip: Lucid Enterprise accounts come with universal canvas , a capability that allows you to seamlessly switch between Lucidchart for diagramming and Lucidspark for whiteboarding . It’s perfect for technical and non-technical teams working together!

Create visuals quickly by using ready-made templates.

5. Avoid technical jargon when possible

The tech world has more than its fair share of technical jargon. Although it may be second nature for you to throw out acronyms like GCP and DBMS, certain terminology may confuse or disengage the less technically savvy members of your audience. Take some time to make sure your audience understands the context of the situation. 

If possible, avoid using jargon altogether—it’s typically more effective to say exactly what you mean instead of relying on your audience’s understanding of an acronym. And if there is no better way to say something, you might consider providing a reference guide for any technical acronyms and terms you’ll be using during your presentation or incorporating those definitions into your slides.

6. Focus on impact when explaining technical concepts

Remember, information that might be fascinating to you might not be fascinating (or relevant) to your audience.

When discussing technology, it’s more helpful to highlight what makes it a worthwhile investment rather than how it works. Let’s say, for example, that you were suggesting the adoption of new patching, suppressing, and monitoring protocols for your network. Rather than going on about the latest authentication process technologies, you might focus your discussion on how in 2022, the average cost of a data breach for U.S. businesses was $9.44 million.

Focus on the initiatives and pain points that your audience cares most about, and your interactions will have a much greater impact with executives and other non-technical employees at your organization.

7. Encourage questions

Last but not least, encourage questions throughout your presentation. You might find that some people will nod their heads but not understand what you are saying and are too embarrassed to ask questions. As you go through your presentation, pause and ask, “Are there any questions?” Create an atmosphere where stakeholders feel comfortable asking for clarification and starting conversations. 

Explaining things in simple terms is an ongoing practice

Be realistic about how much you can explain to a non-technical audience with a single presentation or interaction. You may need to conduct regular meetings to provide your organization’s non-techies with the in-depth understanding and appreciation they need.

Even if it feels like you’re only making incremental progress, to those who were previously unfamiliar with the technology you share, your efforts may feel like a true revelation.

Lucidchart is the visual workspace where technical professionals can gain visibility into existing tech, plan for the future, and communicate clearly with stakeholders.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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Difference Between Technical and Non-Technical Content Writing

Technical and non-technical content writing is very different. The former has more depth in the quality of the language used and explanations provided, while the latter is more about prioritizing practicality and easy readability. However, both types have their own importance and target audiences.

Technical writing is meant for experts in their field, while non-technical content is usually written for the general audience who aren’t familiar with certain technical terms.

This article will explain the key differences between technical and non-technical content writing. However, let us first have an individual glance over what technical and non-technical content writing means.

What Is Technical Writing?

Technical content can be difficult to write because it requires knowledge of the subject matter and extensive research. Technical writing is not just limited to engineering and scientific fields; any field can have technical documents and manuals if there are products in that domain. Technical writers write about their specific fields of expertise, whereas non-technical writers write about more general topics. Technical content writers may work with engineering, science, programming, or law topics.

Technical content writing requires you to have a deeper knowledge of your industry than just what you see on the surface level. You need to be able to write out processes and procedures as well as explain them in a way that will make sense for your audience.

For example, if you are developing a new app, then the user manual that comes with it becomes technical writing. Similarly, suppose there’s a new technology that’s patented in your country or is an export product. In that case, there will be documents related to the patent application and the machine’s prototype.

So technical writing includes all these things. It can also include anything written for students at the university level who are learning about specific subjects. The writer has to ensure his work is error-free so that students can learn without confusion.

What Is Non-Technical Writing?

Non-technical content writing is any piece of text that isn’t about computers, code, or other technical topics. Non-technical writing can include blog posts, product descriptions, and review articles. A non-technical writer could work in any field, including journalism and copywriting.

For example, let us assume that you are purchasing something online. If you are looking for information about how to use or install your product, then there are certain things that need to be taken into account. You will see entire sentences with no grammatical errors in them; the language has to be easy enough for everyone to understand regardless of their education level, and it should make sense without ambiguity.

This type of writing falls under the category of non-technical writing because it requires good command of vocabulary since most users aren’t experts in fields like engineering or Science. Non-technical content writers may work with marketing, finance, or health care topics.

Difference Between Technical And Non-Technical Content Writing

Technical information is usually more detailed and requires a higher level of understanding on the reader’s part than non-technical information. In most cases, technical information is appropriate only for those in the target industry who need to know specific details about how something works. For this reason, it’s generally not appropriate to use technical language in a blog post unless it’s directed at an audience with high levels of expertise in that area. Many people have a misconception about technical and non-technical content writing services.

Technical Content Writing Example: How Often You Should Change Your Engine Oil?

Processes and procedures are a type of technical writing because it requires you to know what you’re talking about before you put anything down on paper.

Technical content writing would require you to research oil changes for a specific make and model of car as well as explain the process step by step as if someone is performing this task for the first time without any prior knowledge or experience.

This is where understanding your industry really comes in handy; if you were hired to write an article about how often people should change their oil, you should be able to come up with some pretty accurate numbers based on each different scenario which will allow your audience members to know exactly when they should consider changing their oil.

Also, all types of documentation, manuals, etc., come under technical writing.

Non-Technical Content Writing Example: Why Netflix is So Popular?

Non-technical content writing talks about concepts and ideas without any steps to get there or processes required. This type of writing does not require you to know anything outside of the general overview of your industry.

Why Netflix is so popular won’t require any writer to have a profound understanding of technical specifications that someone who is writing on engine oil change will need to have. Technical writers write about their specific fields of expertise, whereas non-technical writers write about more general topics.

Non-Technical Content Writing vs. Technical Content Writing Comparision

Technical content writers may work with topics that include engineering, science, medicine, computer science, engineering, and programming, the law. Non-technical content writers may work with topics like marketing, finance, historical events, opinions, biographies, or personal care. There are many ways to break down the differences between technical and non-technical content writing. Technical content typically consists of a list of instructions, features and benefits, and specifications. Non-technical content is written primarily for your blog readers or a general audience. Non-technical content refers to any type of writing that is not primarily intended for the purpose of conveying information about a commercial product or service (e.g., an article, essay, story, or speech). Depending on your industry and your business type, one type of writer will be more suitable for your needs.

How to Decide Which Type of Writer You Will Be?

There are many factors that go into deciding which type of content writer you will be. While some people may find writing about something they know more rewarding, others may prefer the challenge of writing about a topic they know nothing about. If you’re reading this article and have no idea what type of content writer you want to be, consider these three questions:

1. Do you enjoy technical topics?

2. Are you passionate about what you write about?

3. Do you enjoy non-technical topics?

If you answered yes to all three questions, then it’s likely that technical content would suit your needs best. If any one of them is a “no,” then it’s most likely that non-technical content writing would suit your needs better. The most important thing is to find something that interests and excites you, whether it’s technical or not.

The Final Words

If you are looking to publish research papers, your standards must be different from someone who writes fiction. Different businesses require different types of content writing. Technical writing and non-technical writing both provide businesses to accommodate all types of required content types.

Kanchi is an SEO writer who enjoys creating content. She is a relentless work bee, buzzing with innovative ideas. A cheerful person, a creative mind, and an articulate professional, she believes in taking life one day at a time.

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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How to Explain Technical Concepts to a Non-Technical Audience

Like it or not, techies are getting pushed out from the backroom to the front lines. Increasingly, you find yourself standing in front of non-technical audiences – customers, C-suite members, finance, cross-functional team members, and other stakeholders – expected to explain tech concepts in simple terms.

Need some help? Here are six proven strategies you can use to communicate tech concepts to a non-technical audience effectively.

Establish relevance upfront

Your audience will be much more receptive to your information if they understand how it will impact them. Sure, you want to explain the process roadmap, but it may be a good idea to begin by explaining the point of arrival.

Preparation is the key here. Do your homework beforehand to understand what will be considered relevant information by the audience, and then craft your presentation to address the what’s-in-it-for-me question upfront and early on in the interaction.

Avoid information overload

While you may have a lot of information to share, cramming every detail down the audience’s throat will not help.

Be selective and keep paring the content. Consider what is essential to the audience. Try and anticipate the questions they will ask. And then, remember to stay focused on the most important and relevant points during the discussion.

Been asked to assess one cybersecurity tool against another in a limited time? Instead of contrasting the technology that powers the tools, focus on how the tools will translate into ROI, risk mitigation, and functionality.

Tell a Story

Everyone loves a good story. So, weave one around your message. Don’t just make a presentation; take the audience on a journey. When planning each slide, see how it will push the presentation’s overall narrative forward.

Incorporate personal anecdotes, examples, and analogies to make your point. If you don’t have any personal stories that relate to the situation, research. Use relatable events to make your case.

Junk the Jargon

The abbreviated terms and domain-specific terminologies that are a second language for you are alien to your audience. You need to ditch the jargon.

Peppering the conversation with lots of technical terms may lead to audience disinterest and disengagement. Instead, try to simplify and explain concepts as much as possible.

If a lot of detail is required, and/or you are unsure about the audience’s technical expertise, distributing a jargon cheat sheet before getting into the presentation/interaction may be a good idea.

Use visuals aids

Why waste half the meeting trying to explain a point when a few pictures can illustrate the point much more quickly.

Visual content is highly effective in communicating technical processes and concepts. As per studies, 65% of people are visual learners. Therefore, visual aids are valuable for helping non-technical audiences understand technical concepts.

Do leverage diagrams, models, and other visual presentation techniques to drive home your point.

Ask for feedback, invite questions

Communication is a two-way street. Along with saying your piece, focus on the audience’s response. Do your listeners have any questions? Are they seem to be following your pace? Look out for implicit cues and seek explicit feedback as well.

Take frequent breaks to invite questions and clarify points. Be respectful of the audience’s technical knowledge limitations.

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How to Present Data to a Non-Technical Audience

When you?re presenting data analytics or any technical information to a non-technical audience, it can be difficult. You have to think about the components of a good presentation in general, but also how to simplify complex subjects and information and make them resonate with your target audience. If you?re someone who understands data analytics well or is highly technical, it can be especially challenging to know how to make your presentation work for the needs of an audience which is different from you. The following are some presentation tips that can help you in general, but especially with a non-technical audience.

Choose the Right Presentation Software

Presentation software

can make a huge difference in the quality of your presentation, and also how well you?re able to present difficult concepts to your audience in a way they?ll understand. Having a good platform to create and present from within will not only help you engage with non-technical audiences ?it will help you with any presentation for any audience. The following are some features to look for in presentation software.

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• Appealing transitions: Transitions are important because you want to keep your audience engaged during these shifts.
• Real-time Co-Authoring: This feature means that if you share your presentation with anyone they?ll have the ability to ask questions and make comments. You should look for a platform that lets you provide varying levels of access to different collaborators.
• Video Conference: If you have video conferences that are part of your presentation software, it makes for a more seamless experience.

Know Your Audience

You may think you know your audience just by having the understanding that they?re non-technical, but that only tells a small part of the story. There can be a lot of variance within that parameter, so work on getting to know your audience not just right before you give your presentation, but when you?re building your presentation.

Data Visualization

Data visualization can be one of the most important components of a presentation, but also one of the most challenging to tailor to the needs of your audience. A few things to consider here include:

• What are the decisions being made by your audience, and what do they already know versus what they need to know? You need to tailor your insights and visualizations directly to helping them make the decisions they?re responsible for.
• How will you break down the text versus the graphics? This day in age, with everyone in a time-crunch, it can be best to aim for 80% graphics compared to 20% text, or at least something close to those estimates.
• Consider giving handouts to complement your presentation. This doesn?t mean copies of the full presentation?those aren?t likely to be very useful. Instead, create handouts that summarize maybe 5 or so of the most important points from your presentation.

What Types of Charts Work Best?

The specific types of charts you implement into a data-based presentation vary depending on your audience, but also the type of information being presented. For example, bar charts tend to work well as a way to show aggregated data and compare data across larger categories. Bar charts also tend to be very digestible for an audience with no technical background. Line charts can be a little more complex, but still workable if your audience isn?t technical. Line charts can be used to show changing values over time. Pie charts aren?t necessarily the best way to show data unless that data adds up to 100%. Pie charts shouldn?t have more than four categories, and they aren?t good for presenting a lot of details. Additionally, there?s not really any reason to use 3D charts. They don?t add value to a presentation, other than they might capture more visual interest.

Tell a Story

When you?re giving a presentation, even if it?s filled with numbers and data, you want to think of yourself as a storyteller. You want to take your findings, and weave them into something cohesive with a beginning, middle, and end. Keep your visualizations simple, and ensure that they work with the story to deliver overall findings. Work on presentations with a logical flow from the beginning to the end, and don?t make your audience come to their own conclusions. Those conclusions are ultimately part of the story you?re telling. Finally, most presentations fall flat because of too much information rather than too little. Go through every slide and make sure that it fits with your story and tells something that your audience absolutely needs to know to understand the story.

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Technical VS Non-Technical Content: 3 Key Differences

When it comes to creating content for your website, you have two main options: technical content or non-technical content. But what’s the difference? And which type of content is right for your business? In this blog post, we will discuss the differences between technical vs non-technical content. Also, we will help you decide which type of content is best for your website.

What is non-technical content?

Non-technical content is any content that does not require specialized knowledge or training to understand or write. This can include things like instructions, descriptions about general information. While non-technical content does not require expert knowledge, it still needs to be well written and easy to understand.

To accomplish this, writers of non-technical content must use clear and concise language . They should also avoid using jargon or technical terms that might confuse readers. By keeping these things in mind, writers can ensure that their non-technical content is accessible and informative.

What is technical content?

Technical content is a type of written content that covers a wide range of topics, from software to hardware to engineering. It educates the reader on a particular subject or to provide instructions on how to use a product or service. Also, it explains in simple terms how a system or process works. These allow the reader to make an informed decision while he understands the technicalities.

You can find technical content in a variety of formats. These include HOW-TO guides, manuals, tutorials, online documentation, online manuals, user guides, and blog posts.

While someone might think it might be denser and more difficult to read than other types of writing, it is essential for businesses that want to provide accurate and up-to-date information to their customers. By understanding what technical content is and how it can be used, businesses can ensure that their customers have the information they need to make informed decisions.

Technical Content VS Non-Technical Content: 3 Key Differences

Businesses often need to produce both technical and non-technical content. But what’s the difference between the two, and why does it matter?

There are a few key considerations to keep in mind when determining which type of content is right for your business blog.

The target audience.

If you’re trying to reach readers who are interested already in your field and want to understand, for instance, how products work, then technical content may be more appropriate. If you’re hoping to reach a wider audience with your blog who doesn’t know about your company or products yet, then non-technical content may be more effective.

The information someone wants to communicate.

Technical content is typically more detailed and specific, while non-technical content is more general and broadly focused.

The goals for the content/ blog.

If you’re looking to educate your readers about your products or services, then technical content may be more appropriate. However, if you’re trying to generate leads, then non-technical content may be more effective.

No matter what type of content you choose for your business blog, the most important thing is that it is well-written and informative.

But the process of writing these can show even more differences between the two. Therefore, we recommend you read our article Technical Writing VS Content Writing: The 8 Differences.

The benefits of Publishing technical content on your website

In today’s competitive marketplace, a website is essential for any business that wants to succeed. And while a website can serve many purposes, one of the most important is to provide information about your product or service.

Technical content can help your website visitors understand what you offer and why it is valuable. By including technical information on your website, you can show potential customers that you are an expert in your field. You also can show them that you commit yourself to providing them with the best possible product or service.

In addition, technical content can also help to improve your search engine ranking, making it easier for potential customers to find your website. As a result, including technical content on your website is an essential part of promoting your business online.

The benefits of Publishing non-technical content on your website

In a world where technology is constantly developing, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest trends and forget about the importance of non-technical content. However, there are many good reasons to include non-technical content on your website.

For starters, it helps to humanize your brand and make it more relatable to your audience.

In addition, non-technical content can help to build trust and credibility with your audience by providing valuable information that is not overtly salesy or promotional.

Finally, non-technical content can also serve as a valuable SEO tool, helping you to attract less experienced users, who may eventually be interested in learning more about your products or services, to your site and improve your search engine ranking.

Ultimately, including a mix of technical and non-technical content on your website can help you reach a wider audience and achieve your business goals.

How to know which type of content is right for you?

Technical content is typically more detailed, offering in-depth explanations and instructions. Non-technical content generally can be easier to digest. But which type of content is right for you and your business? Here are three factors to consider:

The type of business you’re in

If you’re in a highly technical field, such as engineering or web development, then technical content is probably a better fit. If you run a more general business, such as a retail store or a restaurant, non-technical content may be just what you need.

The tone of your website

You should consider the tone of your website when deciding between technical and non-technical content. A site with a serious, professional tone will probably benefit from technical content that is straightforward and informative. A site with a more lighthearted tone can get away with non-technical content that is more conversational and even humorous.

Your target audience

Generally, people gear technical content towards people who are already familiar with the subject matter. If you’re targeting beginners or laymen, then non-technical content may be a better choice. Technical content can also be a good option if you want to attract experienced professionals to your site.

In conclusion, technical content vs non-technical content is a matter of preference. It really depends on the type of business you have, your target audience, and the tone of your website, and your target audience. Ultimately, the best way to determine which type of content is right for you is to experiment and see what works best for your business.

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nontechnical

Definition of nontechnical

Examples of nontechnical in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'nontechnical.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1833, in the meaning defined above

Dictionary Entries Near nontechnical

nonteaching

nontemporal

Cite this Entry

“Nontechnical.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nontechnical. Accessed 27 May. 2024.

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Non Technical Topics for Group Discussions

• Updated on  
• May 22, 2023

Group Discussion (GD) is a common methodology utilised by different types of organizations, be it recruiters or academic institutions in order to assess candidates on their analytical reasoning and thinking capabilities. These discussions are generally conducted to test applicants’ logical reasoning and spontaneity as well as how creatively they can come up with probable arguments for a given topic. While the allotted subject of discussion might vary as per the course or career profile, there are some general topics related to the latest happenings and social issues that might be given for GDs. This blog aims to describe some of the major non technical topics for group discussions that you should definitely know about!

This Blog Includes:

List of non technical topics for presentation, non technical topics for group discussion on environment, general non technical topics, social and political issues , economic issues , how to prepare for non technical topics for group discussions, gd topics on general issues with answers.

For presentations, there is a multitude of non technical topics from diverse fields that you can choose from. To help you with your research, we have curated an extensive list of non technical topics for presentations given below:

• Covid-19 and its Impact on World Economy
• Online Learning: Benefits, Challenges and Opportunities
• Social Media and Social Businesses
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media
• Communication Skills
• Soft Skills
• Climate Change
• Principles of Management
• Marketing Strategy
• Inventory Management
• Social Media
• Classroom Management
• Entrepreneurship
• Logistics Management
• Natural Resources
• Thermal Pollution
• Noise Pollution
• Land Pollution
• Sources of Water
• Operations Management
• Marine Pollution
• Materials Management
• Radioactive Pollution
• International law
• Chromatography
• Air Pollution
• Water Pollution
• Disaster Management
• Child Labour
• Organic Farming
• Impact of Technology on Teaching and Learning
• Internet & Traditional Media
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Food Engineering
• Technology & Medical Science
• Identity Theft
• Cyber Crimes
• Juvenile Justice System
• Impact of Technology in Crime Prevention
• Importance of Sanitation
• Air Quality
• Vehicular Pollution
• Swacch Bharat Mission
• Revival of Groundwater Reservoirs
• Shift to the Renewable Sources of Energy
• Harmful Effects of Blaring Music
• Save Wildlife and Environment
• Cutting of Hills and Clearing of Forests to Level the Land
• Usage of Fossil Fuels in Household Chores
• Effects of Dumping E-waste into Landfills
• Are Dams a Disruption to the Natural Flow of the Rivers?
• Should Burning of Fodder be Made Illegal?
• Deposition of Waste in the Flow of the Rivers
• Should Bursting of Firecrackers be Banned?

Whether it is for group discussion, seminar or classroom presentation, finding technical topics can be quite an arduous task. Before providing you with the titles for GD and Presentation, check out some of the prominent non technical topics you can use for both these purposes:

• Profit is the only motive of business. Take a stand.
• Consumer is king.
• Advances in technology in today’s world – boon or bane?
• Hyper competition has killed the telecom industry.
• Depreciation of rupee: boon/ bane for the economy?
• Criticism – is it good or bad?
• FDI in Retail – Advantages & Disadvantages
• Women’s empowerment leads to social development.
• Online Social Networking is a parallel world. Do you agree?
• Role of media in the digital era.
• Green Technology
• Future of Technology
• Technologies are a core strength of the nation.
• Same-sex marriage
• Driving and restraining forces impact global integration and international marketing.
• What does the future hold for global governance?
• How is Artificial Intelligence changing businesses?
• Social Media & Privacy
• Social Literacy Skills
• Implications of Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 in India

Being aware of the ongoings of the world that surrounds us is crucial for successfully clearing the GD part of your application process. Some of the major social and political issues are listed down to help you gauge the different types of non technical topics you might get:

• Impact of Social Media on the Younger Generation
• Values Exhibited Through the Different Mediums of Art and its Impact
• Brand Frenzy Culture
• Section 377
• Censorship of Art
• Caste Discrimination
• Female Foeticide
• Rapid Population Growth
• Reel Life v/s Real Life
• Role of Physical Fitness
• Equal Rights for Women
• Single Parent
• Child Marriage
• Gender Sensitivity 
• Juvenile Crime and Punishment 
• Right to Privacy
• Joint Family V/S Nuclear Family
• Co-ed V/s Girls/Boys School Education
• Man-made Environment v/s Natural Environment 
• Role of Media in our Society Highlighting the Media Trials
• Importance of a Psychologist in One’s Life
• Importance of Bringing Taboos into the Public Sphere
• Vitality of Being Self-Dependant 
• Article 370
• The Thread of Unity That Runs Across All Cultures and Ethnicities
• Should Steps be Taken to Solve the Problem of Students Having to Carry Heavy Bags
• Should Basic Requirements to Become a Politician be Revised?
• Should Mobile Phones be Allowed in Schools?
• What Does a Uniform in an Institution Represent?

Other recurrent debates that happen in GDs are related to economic issues on national as well as global level. Take a look at the following non technical topics for group discussion under the domain of Economics: 

• Goods and Services Tax (GS)
• Offshoots of Demonetization
• How safe are Digital Transactions?
• Impact of COVID on Economy
• Economic Reforms
• Would Aadhar be Successful in Replacing the Social Security System?
• Dynamics of the Current Start-up Culture
• Real Estate of India
• Wide Socio-economic Gap
• Economic Reservation

A group discussion usually involves multiple participants (around 5-15) and a moderator who facilitates the whole discussion by allotting the topic, mediating it and regulating it in a way that does not allow much of a deviation. Further, he also plays a role in assessing different candidates and their logical abilities based on their arguments, how they are framed as well as their quick thinking and responses given in a timebound manner.

• When it comes to handling non technical topics, you need to be updated about the recent news developments across the globe.
• Further, you should be able to think on your feet if there are topics given under ‘for’ and ‘against’.
• Let the other person speaks and then give your viewpoints.
• You should not act in a belittling manner or try to act superior because how you say it matters more than what you are saying.  

Advantages: Fossil fuels are the most commonly used sources of energy in households and it is also the cheapest and most easily available option. Disadvantages: Fossil fuels are a nonrenewable resource along with being a major source of pollution and global warming .

For: There is an extensive need for land both for increasing agricultural output to feed the rapidly increasing population and for setting up buildings and factories. Thus cutting of hills and clearing forests are necessary. Against: Cutting of hills and clearing forests caused deforestation, which is a leading cause of global warming. Additionally, it can lead to soil erosion, a decline in biodiversity as increased pollution levels in the atmosphere.

Yes: Firecrackers not only cause a lot of air pollution but are also harmful to people with heart ailments due to the noise they produce. No: Bursting firecrackers are a means of celebrating a variety of events such as marriages, victory, new year celebrations etc. It should not be banned but steps can be taken to moderate its use.

Good: Criticism when provided in a constructive manner can help us work on our shortcomings and improve ourselves. Bad: Continuous criticism in a derogatory manner can lower the self-esteem of a person.

Positive: Social media is a great way to not only be connected with your friends and family but also is useful in keeping yourself updated with all the latest news and events. Negative: On the other hand, social media is extensively used to spread fake news which may have many harmful effects. Also, the cases of online harassment and bullying are increasing day by day.

Yes: Mobile phones are a necessity today. Students can contact their families in case of any emergency or accident that might happen. No: Allowing mobile phones in school may lead to a student constantly using it to play games or surf the internet while neglecting their classes 

The Future of Banking in India. Rise of Protectionism. Rising heat waves. Celebrity Endorsement of Products. Effect of ChatGPT on Journalism. Biohacking. Thorium for clean unlimited enegry. India-Japan Relations.

A Topic-Based Group Discussion involves assigning a topic to the group and asking the members to discuss it. These subjects could fall into one of four categories: Controversial themes, Knowledge-Based Topics, and Abstract Topics are all examples of such themes.

Observe the Group Discussion Guidelines Key Group Discussion abilities include speaking logically, being audible, presenting your argument clearly, and acting as a leader. Use every opportunity to enter the discussion to further your position. Read through some sample and actual Group Discussion rounds.

Hence, now that you know the major non technical topics for group discussion, you can start jotting down the pointers and gear up towards the ultimate day of your GD. Whether you are a student going through the screening process of an academic institution or a fresher prepping up for the selection rounds, our Leverage Edu experts are here to assist you throughout the preparation process and ensure that you soar smoothly through the journey of actualising your dream career ambitions.

Team Leverage Edu

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Non-technical Skills in Healthcare

• Open Access
• First Online: 15 December 2020

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• Stavros Prineas 5 ,
• Kathleen Mosier 6 ,
• Claus Mirko 7 &
• Stefano Guicciardi 8 , 9  

16 Citations

Non-technical Skills (NTS) are a set of generic cognitive and social skills, exhibited by individuals and teams, that support technical skills when performing complex tasks. Typical NTS training topics include performance shaping factors, planning and preparation for complex tasks, situation awareness, perception of risk, decision-making, communication, teamwork and leadership. This chapter provides a framework for understanding these skills in theory and practice, how they interact, and how they have been applied in healthcare, as well as avenues for future research.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

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Non-technical Skills for Anesthesia Technician

Development of instruments for assessment of individuals’ and teams’ non-technical skills in healthcare: a critical review

TeamSTEPPS: Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety

• Non-technical skills
• Paratechnical skills
• Patient safety
• Human factors
• Performance shaping factors
• Situation awareness
• Risk perception
• Decision-making
• Communication

1 Introduction

Non-Technical Skills (NTS) can be defined as a constellation of cognitive and social skills, exhibited by individuals and teams, needed to reduce error and improve human performance in complex systems . NTS have been described as generic ‘life-skills’ that can be applied across all technical domains [ 1 ]; they are deemed to be ‘non-technical’, in that they have traditionally resided outside most formal technical education curricula. While the importance of human factors in the performance of technical tasks has been appreciated for over 80 years [ 2 , 3 ], NTS as a formal training system is derived from aviation Crew Resource Management (originally called Cockpit Resource Management). CRM was first adopted by United Airlines in 1981 [ 4 ] after a series of high-profile air crashes in the late 1970s, in which human elements such as poor communication, teamwork and situation awareness were identified as key contributing factors [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. CRM is now fully integrated into all commercial pilot training worldwide; in a constant state of evolution, it is currently in its sixth generation [ 8 ].

In healthcare, it was not until the 1990s that the significance of human factors in patient safety became more widely publicised [ 9 ], coinciding with the rise in medical simulation [ 10 ]. In 1999, an emergency medicine team training project, MedTeams, was launched [ 11 ]. The following year two landmark reports were published within weeks of each other: To Err is Human in the USA [ 12 ] and An Organisation with a Memory in the UK [ 13 ]. These inspired a burgeoning of research into applied human factors in healthcare. Flin pioneered a behavioural marker system known as Anaesthetists’ Non-Technical Skills (ANTS: [ 14 ]), followed by Non-Technical Skills for Surgeons (NOTTS: [ 15 ]). The disciplines of anaesthesia, critical care and surgery remain at the forefront of NTS training in medicine. Several other multidisciplinary clinical NTS frameworks, including the Oxford NOTECHs system [ 16 ] and TeamSTEPPS™ [ 17 ], have also been implemented and studied in real and simulated clinical environments.

As NTS evaluation and/or training systems become increasingly incorporated within undergraduate and postgraduate technical curricula, and specific techniques are developed (especially in communication skills) supported by a growing body of research, a paradox arises: many non-technical skills no longer qualify as being ‘non-technical’. Moreover the term ‘non-technical’ appears to subordinate these skills to their technical counterparts, when in reality the two skill sets are both essential and inseparable, especially during the management of medical crises. In time new terms may be required (e.g. ‘paratechnical’ skills, Clinical Resource Management) to define and describe this group of skills, and to consolidate their true place in the clinician’s armamentarium.

1.1 Practical Overview of NTS Training Topics in Healthcare

The standard NTS training topics are summarised in Table 30.1 and detailed in the rest of this chapter. It is important to recognise that these skills are intertwined not only with the more traditional skills they support, but also with each other. Proficiency in one non-technical skill is, to no small extent, dependent on proficiency in the others. Newer generations of aviation CRM have introduced new topics, e.g. the acquisition of expertise and managing automation. It is foreseeable therefore that these topics will be incorporated into future clinical NTS training programmes.

2 Performance Shaping Factors

Most work environments operate on the assumption that adequate training, experience and motivation are enough to ensure successful performance. These prerequisites are necessary but not sufficient, especially in a complex adaptive system such as healthcare. There are many factors that can influence human performance—over long periods of time, from day to day, or in a given moment. Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs) can be classified according to a clinical adaptation of Reason’s ‘Three Buckets’ model [ 18 ] where the traditional categories of ‘task’ (factors inherent to the nature of the task), ‘self’ (internal and personal factors) and ‘context’ (environmental factors) are each sub-divided into ‘task/patient’, ‘individual/team’ and ‘workplace/organisation’ factors, respectively (Fig. 30.1 ).

Performance Shaping Factors. A clinical expansion of Reason’s Three Buckets model

The ability to identify and evaluate PSFs in everyday practice may be a useful skill for frontline clinicians. The Three Buckets model can be applied both prospectively and retrospectively. In 2008, the UK National Patient Safety Agency launched a Foresight Training Resource Pack [ 19 ], based on a simplified version of the Three Buckets model, to help nurses and midwives better foresee clinical risks. This package is currently used in a number of NHS Trusts. As a retrospective incident analysis tool, Contributory Factors Analysis, also known as the ‘London Protocol’ [ 20 ], is based on a similar principle, as is the HEAPS incident analysis tool used in Queensland Health [ 21 ] and other health networks in Australia. A quick Three-Bucket summary can be used to highlight PSFs relevant to cases presented at, e.g. Grand Rounds or M&M meetings.

3 Planning and Preparation Skills

Popular culture is full of references stressing the importance of planning and preparation before performing complex tasks: ‘Be Prepared’, ‘Plan the Dive and Dive the Plan’, ‘Luck favours the prepared’, ‘P to the seventh power’ (‘Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents P—Poor Performance’), etc. In teaching hospital settings, medical and nursing trainees are often asked to perform tasks for which they are ill-prepared. In these efforts they are not only hampered by the opportunistic nature of teaching in clinical settings, but also by the culture of ‘see one, do one, teach one’, a tradition that is counter-intuitive to human-factors thinking and seemingly peculiar (among high-risk endeavours) to medical and nursing education. ‘SODOTO’ training has both critics [ 22 ] and defenders [ 23 ]. Simulation Based Education (SBE) can be used to demonstrate the consequences of poor preparation and planning in a safe setting [ 24 ].

While there are a number of system tools that can help and guide staff (orientation days, checklists, pre-prepared procedural kits, etc.), the question arises as to whether there is a set of definable human competencies/aptitudes that optimise planning and preparing for tasks, and whether this can be taught. The answer to the first part of this question appears to be ‘yes’, in that evaluation of planning, preparation and prioritisation skills are key elements of the ANTS behavioural marker system. These help researchers identify ‘good’ and ‘poor’ task management behaviours in simulated settings, with the highest inter-rater reliability of the four main ANTS categories [ 25 ]. However, the ANTS system is not designed to address how to train practitioners to plan and prepare better.

4 Situation Awareness and Perception of Risk

Situation awareness (SA) is defined as ‘the perception of elements in the environment, the comprehension of their meaning in terms of task goals, and the projection of their status in the near future’ [ 26 ]. Perception is essentially being aware of and/or gathering available information relevant to a situation. In a clinical context this correlates with taking a clinical history, examining a patient, reviewing the results of investigations and tests, receiving a handover, conducting a briefing, etc. Comprehension is the ability to form a mental model that makes sense of the available information. In clinical practice, this would be similar to forming a diagnosis, or a differential of diagnoses. Projection is the ability to use an operating mental model of a situation to foresee potential future states, or as clinicians would say, to make a prognosis. A simple example is given in Fig. 30.2 .

Situation Awareness (SA) in a clinical context. (Courtesy of ErroMed, reproduced with permission)

In traditional medical training, these levels of awareness are built upon each other. For example, trainees are (rightly) encouraged to take a history and examine a patient (Level I SA) before venturing a diagnosis (Level II SA). The SBAR/ISBAR communication tool (see below) is a way of serially organising information to facilitate situation awareness between individuals. In real life however, perception, comprehension and projection may not occur in that order. In many emergency situations it is possible, indeed potentially crucial, to prognose the need to resuscitate (Level III) before one has made a complete examination (Level I) or a definitive diagnosis (Level II). This concept of parallel rather than serial cognitive processing of SA is the hallmark of Naturalistic or Recognition-Primed Decision-Making, and a feature of expert cognition [ 27 ], described figuratively as ‘seeing the past, present and future at the same time’ [ 28 ].

In anaesthetic practice, [ 29 ] described a model of ‘distributed situation awareness’, emphasising that during an operation the patient’s condition is constantly being modified by the interventions of the anaesthetist and the surgeon in real time. Thus, in this model, ideal SA is the result of a dynamic and iterative process of regularly scanning the environment, matching one’s mental model with incoming information, modifying the anaesthetist’s plan and actions accordingly, and cycling through this process repeatedly until the patient is safely in the recovery unit.

4.1 ‘Perception of Risk’

When thinking about potential adverse future states, a number of terms— hazard , threat and risk —are often used interchangeably, when they would perhaps be better used to connote overlapping but distinct concepts. A hazard is anything that could potentially go wrong or cause harm, without any qualification of its likelihood or severity. For example, when asked to list the possible complications of central venous catheter insertion, a medical student will often recite a list of early and late complications, subcategorised according to anatomical location, structure type, etc. The student has no direct experience of central line insertion and therefore limited ability to rank this list of hazards according to their likelihood of occurring in routine practice, or what the real impact of each complication would be.

A threat is the subjective perception of a hazard. It is important to recognise, independently of whatever data exists for a given situation, that a number of factors influence the perception of danger, including gender [ 30 ], healthcare role and length of experience [ 31 ], primacy (the disproportionately ‘formative’ impact of early experiences or first impressions: [ 32 ]), recency (the disproportionate impact of most recent experiences: [ 33 ]), whether a person has volunteered to accept the hazard or had the hazard imposed upon them [ 34 ], whether the hazard is familiar or hitherto unknown [ 35 ], whether the effects are immediate or delayed [ 36 ], etc. If, for example, the medical student above, now a resident, were unlucky enough to cause a chylothorax with an early central line insertion, the complication would tend to figure prominently in that resident’s future assessments for a considerable time afterwards, even though in objective terms such a complication is very rare.

Subjective factors influence threat assessments, which in turn can influence clinical decision-making. For example, a Canadian study of the prescribing practices of family physicians treating patients with atrial fibrillation showed that a substantial proportion stopped prescribing warfarin altogether after one of their patients suffered a haemorrhagic stroke, whereas physicians who did not routinely prescribe anticoagulants tended not to change their practice even when one or more of their patients suffered an thromboembolic stroke [ 37 ]. In this case, the negative consequences of electing to intervene (i.e. prescribing) had a greater impact on perception of risk than the negative consequences of electing not to intervene (i.e. not prescribing).

A risk is a calculated evaluation of the likelihood and impact of a hazard, based on objective assessments and measurements rather than subjective interpretation. For example, the same medical student, now a consultant intensivist, might be able to cite a personal log of their last 1000 central line insertions, quote literature reviews on the topic, and assert that the top three risks in their practice are, e.g. infection, pneumothorax and accidental arterial cannulation. This is what Klein [ 28 ] would call seeing the ‘choke points’—another feature of expertise—the ability to identify quickly where the material dangers are in a situation, what actions are more likely to lead to failure, and what actions better ensure success (‘leverage points’).

In light of this, the term ‘perception of risk’ should be approached with a little caution. In the absence of hard data, most of what clinicians call ‘risk assessments’ in day-to-day practice would in large part actually be ‘threat assessments’. Despite the subjective and potentially distorting nature of threat assessments, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Reliable data for a given risk situation often may not exist, let alone be to hand. Moreover, expert clinicians are often called upon to make decisions in urgent and complex situations, and their ‘threat assessments’ are usually better than a novice’s ‘risk assessments’. To understand why and when this might be true (and when it might not be) requires a deeper analysis.

5 Expert Decision-Making

Efficient and accurate decision-making is critical to patient safety—and it is important that the people responsible for making decisions that impact patient safety are as experienced and as expert as possible. Research on expert decision-making in complex, dynamic domains, often referred to as Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM: [ 27 , 38 ]), has demonstrated that the most important step in making a decision in these domains is to accurately assess the situation—identify the problem, formulate a diagnosis, evaluate the risks. Mosier and Fischer [ 39 ] refer to this as the front end of the decision-making process. Once the situation is known, the retrieval of a workable course of action, the back end of the process, is facilitated.

Expertise impacts the decision process in several specific ways. First, expert decision makers exhibit high levels of competence and knowledge within the domain, and have experienced a wide variety of situations, instances, and cases they can draw upon (e.g. [ 40 ]). This means that a current case will often have features that match an event from the expert’s repertoire, facilitating quick and accurate situation assessment. Second, experts see and process information differently than novices do. They can quickly identify critical cues—that is, the subset of information most critical to accurate situation assessment—and attend to or categorise them. This impacts their ability to develop situation awareness and to create an accurate mental model of the situation [ 41 ]. Experts are sensitive to changing values of information and can adapt their mental models to accommodate them [ 42 ]. They may use an iterative process, using feedback from the environment to adjust their actions and incorporate changes resulting from incremental decisions. In healthcare, for example, physicians often monitor results of a treatment to refine their diagnoses [ 43 ]. They also employ strategies to cope with dynamic situations—anticipating developments, prioritising tasks, and making contingency plans—and employ knowledge-based control to address conflicts or contradictions [ 39 , 44 ]. The NDM framework relies heavily on expertise and on intuitive rather than analytical processing, and capitalises on decision makers’ abilities to pattern match, to mentally simulate a course of action, and to use sense-making strategies to improve their understanding of a given situation.

5.1 Metacognition

Experts not only monitor the situation but also how they are thinking and whether it is appropriate for the situation at hand. They critique and correct their diagnosis until they arrive at a satisfactory mental model of the situation, or further processing is too costly [ 45 , 46 ]. They are able to shift strategies when faced with high uncertainty or unmet expectancies, taking an incremental approach or engaging in more analytical processes [ 47 , 48 ]. For example, expert surgeons perform many routine tasks automatically, but ‘slow down’ and engage in effortful processing in preparation for nonroutine events or in response to unexpected events [ 49 ].

Expertise also attunes the decision maker to affect that is in response to critical elements of the task context and that may have significance for their decisions. The affective reaction to a situation—particularly comfort or discomfort—may represent a knowledge-based informational cue for decision-making. For example, when a situation is not recognised as familiar, affective responses such as unease or discomfort (‘something’s not right’) can motivate the expert to engage in more information gathering, or more substantive sense-making processes. Dominguez [ 50 ], for instance, reported that physicians frequently refer to their comfort level while deciding on whether or not to continue with laparoscopic surgery. This function of affect is similar to the role of ‘hunches’ in split-second decision-making.

5.3 Communication and Decision-Making

All individuals involved in ensuring a patient’s safety must function collaboratively as a team. Because healthcare is a dynamic task environment, team members need to respond adaptively to changing conditions. Communication plays a pivotal role in this process [ 51 ], especially in healthcare as team members often perform sequentially and rely on information from the previous shift to guide their decisions and actions. Team members let others in on their reasoning and inform them about their intentions and expectations [ 52 ]. Critically, expert teams ensure common ground and shared mental models by providing feedback [ 53 ], and work to mitigate decision-making and other errors through team-centred communication [ 54 , 55 ].

5.4 Stress and Decision-Making

Stress related to the working conditions is defined by the World Health Organization as the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities, and which challenge their ability to cope. It occurs in a wide range of circumstances and may have a profound impact on decision-making which, in the medical context, could negatively affect clinical outcomes. Stress-related reductions in cognitive performance (e.g. accuracy, reaction time, attention, memory) resulted in poorer patient safety outcomes such as hospital acquired infections or medication errors [ 56 ].

It is therefore essential to address the causes of stress, which can be found both at the individual and at the organisational level. In the first case, it must be highlighted that medical practice has a solid rational basis made explicit through the clinical reasoning but, given the relationships doctors necessarily build with patients and other professionals, it also entails a strong emotional dimension that must be acknowledged [ 57 ]. Healthcare professionals experience emotions differently, quantitatively and qualitatively, and should be aware of their ‘emotional intelligence’ and trained on their ability to cope and react in case of stressful situations without stigmatisations [ 58 , 59 ].

In the second case, from a system perspective, stressful conditions in the work environment must be identified and possibly mitigated—if not removed—in terms of both contents (working hours, monotony, participation and control) and contexts (job insecurity, teamwork, organisational culture, work-life balance). Doctors are requested to take charge of greater responsibilities and demands, but resources are often limited resulting in risks of overload and burnout. Adequate staffing levels, human-capital investments, respect of working times and cultural changes in the medical organisations with a radical shift from competitiveness to collaboration and teamwork are therefore needed to reduce stress and its consequences [ 60 ].

6 Communication

‘Effective communication’ is recognised as a core non-technical skill [ 17 ], a means to provide knowledge, institute relationships, establish predictable behaviour patterns, and as a vital component for leadership and team coordination [ 61 , 62 ]. It is crucial for delivering high-quality healthcare and has been acknowledged together with effective teamwork as an essential component for patient safety [ 61 , 63 ]. ‘Communication failures’ have long been recognised as a leading cause of unintentional patient harm [ 64 ]. More recently a report of 2587 sentinel medical adverse events, reviewed by the US Joint Commission over a 3-year period, cited ‘communication’ as a contributing factor in over 68% of cases [ 65 ].

However, ‘communication’ is a very broad term; pinning down a practical definition is difficult. In the wider academic literature, communication has been classified according to at least seven distinct philosophical approaches [ 66 ], of which at least two are relevant to non-technical skills training in healthcare: the information engineering (‘cybernetic’) approach and the social construction (‘sociocultural’) approach [ 67 , 68 ]. The first defines communication as the linear transmission of ‘signal packages’ from a ‘transmitter’ to a ‘receiver’ through a medium. The latter emphasises how team communication can create the dynamic context in which people work, implying that communication, rather than a neutral mean, is the primary social process through which a meaningful shared world is built [ 67 ]. There is also the field of ‘semiotics’—the study of signals and the nature of ‘meaning’ itself across different populations, demographics and cultures. These varied perspectives underscore the sociotechnical nature of all healthcare communication.

For the purposes of developing workable patient safety tools (and mindful of this very narrow context), communication can be defined as the transfer of meaning from one person to another [ 69 ]. In teams comprising health professionals with different backgrounds, roles, training and perspectives on care, the main purpose of communication is to facilitate among team members a shared mental model of a situation: the context, the goals, the tasks, the methods to be used, who will do what, etc. (i.e. ‘team situation awareness’). Thus, it is important to recognise that ‘meaning’ is different to ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’, and effective communication therefore depends to some extent on the existing level of situation awareness of individual team members. For example, stating clearly that ‘the patient’s blood pressure is 80/50’ is not per se effective communication of its meaning if the person hearing it does not know that this finding usually represents critical hypotension in an adult.

While effective teamwork requires much more than communication (see below), specific failures in communication can hinder the process of building a shared understanding of the situation between team members, leading to poor performance and errors [ 70 ]. It follows that effective communication in healthcare teams can only be the result of dynamic iterative ‘two-way’ processes that lead to an ‘equilibrium of understanding’ among team members [ 69 ], and which can and must change with the input of new people and new information. Refining these processes can be seen as the basis for developing better ‘communication skills’.

6.1 Specific/Directed/Acknowledged Communication

For ensuring effective team communication two aspects have been highlighted as fundamental [ 71 ]: the sharing of unique information held by team members in face-to-face environments and openness of information in virtual environments [ 72 , 73 ]. To this one can add the implementation of closed-loop communication procedures that acknowledge the receipt of information and clarify any inconsistencies in information interpretation [ 74 ].

The concept of ‘specific/directed/acknowledged’ communication comes from simulation training [ 10 ]. ‘Specific’ refers to speaking clearly and the use of salient unambiguous descriptions, ideally using a ‘controlled vocabulary’ of terms with unique meanings as agreed by a discrete population of practitioners. An obvious example is the ‘military speak’ used in formal mission communications between soldiers, both in Hollywood movies and real life; however it should also be apparent that much of the diagnostic and therapeutic jargon used by clinicians, based mostly on Latin and Greek terminology, is already a form of controlled vocabulary. Specificity is also reflected in a number of other practical ways [ 69 ]:

Using the word ‘right’ only to mean chirality (as in ‘left’ or ‘right’) and avoiding its use to mean ‘Ok’ or ‘correct’ (as in ‘the left leg is the right leg for this operation, right?’)

Using numbers rather than vague terms where applicable (‘the systolic is 200’ rather than ‘the blood pressure’s high’, ‘I should be there in 10–20 min’ versus ‘I’ll be down soon’).

Using the ‘five rights’ convention for prescribing and administering medications: checking the correct drug in the correct dose via the correct route at the correct time for the correct patient [ 75 ]; a convention routinely taught to nurses but not so consistently to doctors.

Recognising and avoiding non-standard and ambiguous clinical abbreviations and acronyms [ 76 ].

‘Directed’ means that information or instructions are explicitly directed to a nominated person. For example, ‘Fran, please pass me the Yankauer sucker’ instead of ‘Somebody give me something for the bleeding’. Of course, the ability to direct information requires team members to know others’ names in the first place. One of the consistent elements of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is that team members introduce themselves by name and role [ 77 ]. A survey of OR teams showed that participants believed that knowing team member’s name and rank was important not only to team bonding but also to patient safety [ 78 ]. While intuitively attractive, more studies are required to determine whether directed vs. undirected communication has a reproducible impact on clinical safety.

‘Acknowledged’ communication seeks to confirm that what was said was not only heard, but also that what was heard matches what was said. In closed-loop communication , also known as ‘read-back’ [ 79 ], the sender initiates communication, the receiver confirms that the communication has been heard and repeats the content, finally the sender verifies the accuracy of that content including an explicit accuracy check with the recipient [ 62 ]. Closed communication loops improve the reliability of communication by having the receiver of communication restate what was said by the sender to confirm understanding. [ 67 ]. Organisations requiring this type of closed-loop communication can help smooth the communication process and ensure critical information is correctly conveyed and understood. This seems to be most useful, e.g. during surgery to confirm sponge count, during high-risk patient handovers to ensure comprehensive information exchange and during medication ordering [ 67 ].

6.2 Briefings and Handovers

Briefings are discrete meetings to provide members of a team with specific information and/or instructions. Handovers (also called handoffs in the USA) are briefings that occur at a changeover between personnel who share similar roles. Briefings set the scene for team interaction, ensuring that care providers have a shared mental model of what is going to happen during a process, and raising team situation awareness to identify any risk points and plan for contingencies. When done effectively, briefings can establish predictability, reduce interruptions prevent delays and build social relationships and capital for future interactions [ 80 ]. Briefings are designed to prepare teams to counter threats and minimise error potential. Formal and informal protocols, checklists, scenario planning, and open team discussion are commonly used [ 81 ].

Handover problems have been implicated in a number of adverse event studies [ 82 , 83 ]. Perioperative briefings have been proven effective in improving surgical teams climate and their efficiency of their work [ 84 ]. Interprofessional checklist briefings have been shown to reduce the number of communication failures and to promote proactive and collaborative team communication [ 85 ]. Nevertheless, there remain definitional and methodological problems with using the existing literature to support any conclusions of what best practice should be [ 86 ]. This appears to be reflected in a recent retrospective study of over 300,000 adult patients undergoing major surgery, where the risk of complications, hospital readmissions and/or death was 44% in cases where there was a complete handover of anaesthetic care from one practitioner to another during the case, compared with 29% when no handover occurred [ 87 ]. There is clearly still a lot to learn about how to preserve continuity of care safely from one caregiver to another; meanwhile, specific techniques have earned substantial worldwide popularity.

A structured communication technique called Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation (SBAR) has been developed by the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine industry for high-risk situations and for its versatility has been adapted in healthcare setting [ 88 ]. The communication process involving SBAR is as follows: the Situation is conveyed by the initiating individual and establishes the topic of discussion; the Background involves any information needed to make an informed decision for the patient such as the list of current medication, or recent vital signs; in Assessment, the individual initiating the SBAR report the patient’s situation and status; finally, the Recommendation is what the individual initiating the SBAR offers in terms of what they think should take place or be done [ 67 ].

A lower number of incident reports related to communication errors has been linked to SBAR tool in specific context such as effective in improving perception of communication between professionals and of the safety climate [ 89 ]. A recent review found moderate evidence for improved patient safety through SBAR implementation, especially when used to structure communication over the phone.

One study reported problems with the traditional SBAR tool during its implementation at a number of West Australian hospitals [ 90 ], most notably that (a) it was not intuitively obvious that personnel introduce themselves as part of the Situation phase, (b) sometimes certain members disputed the recommendations, and (c) sometimes not all parties clearly understood the recommendations. The researchers proposed ‘iSoBAR’ (where ‘I’ stands for Introductions, ‘O’ stands for Observations and replaces ‘A’ for Assessment, which in turn becomes Agreed Plan, and ‘R’ becomes Readback to confirm the agreed plan of action). At the time of publication, this variant was still in use in West Australia [ 91 ]. A simpler variant, ISBAR (where ‘I’ stands for ‘Identify’) has been adopted by healthcare authorities in other Australian States [ 92 ]; indeed in Australia implementation of some version of SBAR has been adopted as part of a national standard of clinical handover [ 93 ]. However, high-quality research on this widely used communication tool, in whichever variant, is still wanting [ 94 ].

6.4 Escalation of Concern: Graded Assertiveness

In most clinical situations, where there is a clear and agreed pathway for action and appropriate leadership, safety is best maintained by cooperating with the plan and deferring to one’s superiors. However plans do not always proceed as expected; if errors or mishaps occur, or an imminent threat to safety arises, it is sometimes necessary for healthcare providers to assert themselves in a clear and timely fashion to support patient safety [ 67 ]. As there are many hierarchical structures in healthcare with many authority gradients between individuals, speaking up to senior colleagues does not come naturally to many people, especially junior personnel, even in the face of an overt safety issue. Organisations that employ clinicians with a duty of care to patients must therefore seek to empower staff by providing them with training in assertion techniques.

An example of assertive language is the two-challenge rule, where a concern is stated at least two times to better ensure it has been heard. The CUS tool (Concerned, Uncomfortable, Safety issue) also part of the TeamSTEPPS framework escalates communication from an expression of concern through a command to stop. The escalation of concern consists of, ‘I’m concerned’, ‘I’m uncomfortable’, ‘this is unsafe’, meaning ‘This is a potential serious problem. Stop and listen to me’. [ 148 ]. Frankel and Leonard [ 95 ] suggest that the true ‘test’ of teams and leaders occurs when the ‘line is stopped’ after someone raises a concern, which then turns out to have been a false alarm.

Another tool, derived from the aviation-based PACE algorithm [ 96 ], is Graded Assertiveness. The tool comprises four levels of assertion—Observation, Suggestion, Challenge and Emergency—and has been adapted for use in clinical environments [ 69 ]. An example of the tool is given in Fig. 30.3 .

Graded Assertiveness. (Courtesy of ErroMed Pty. Ltd. (Reproduced with permission))

7 Teamwork and Leadership Skills

A team can be defined as ‘ a distinguishable set of two or more individuals who interact dynamically, adaptively, and interdependently; who share common goals or purposes; and who have specific roles or functions to perform’ [ 97 ]. Successful teams are the product of time, effort and trust. As teams are also defined as social entities [ 98 ] that at times perform highly technical functions, there may be value in regarding healthcare teams as microcosms of a wider sociotechnical system, particularly in regard to improving patient safety [ 99 ].

Be it in a community health service or a large hospital, teams come in many forms: teams overlapping with other teams, teams nested within teams, teams dispersed in time and geographical space. It is therefore not surprising that there is a large variation among doctors in their conceptualisations of what and where teams are [ 100 ]. It may not be obvious to an individual practitioner where the team is, or even if one exists, for the task they are trying to perform. Moreover, there is a growing (albeit belated) recognition that patients and their families should be considered as part of the healthcare team [ 101 ].

7.1 The ‘Anatomy’ of Teams

While apparently ‘leaderless’ teams do exist, especially in nature, in the human world most successful teams have leaders and followers . The concept of leadership is complex, and is explored later in this chapter. In broad terms a leader is someone chosen (by the team itself or by others) to exercise authority and influence over the team. While good ‘followership’ requires a cooperative attitude, it too is not as straightforward a concept as it may seem. For example, followers need to know when and how to be assertive, even to their leader, when there is an overt threat to patient safety ([ 69 ]; see Sect. 30.6.4 above). Leaders and followers exhibit different characteristics in different types of teams.

7.2 Unidisciplinary Teams

A unidisciplinary team is one where most of the members, if not all, essentially share the same skill set—an army of soldiers, for example. Unidisciplinary teams tend to be hierarchical, with ranks according to seniority or experience, and leaders of unidisciplinary teams have usually risen through these ranks, and thus share a common training background with their team members. Ranks may be explicit (‘sergeant’, ‘lieutenant’, ‘general’) or implicit (the ‘grand dame’ of a department, the ‘elder statesmen’ of a college or the ‘green’ registrar).

Unidisciplinary teams are very common in healthcare, e.g. clinical departments within a hospital (‘Neurology’, ‘Physiotherapy’, ‘Anaesthesia’, etc.). Unidisciplinary team structures are task/service focused and therefore are great for training and producing results (e.g. provision of a service) of a reproducible standard. It is also more likely that one member of the team can be substituted for another. When members of a unidisciplinary team communicate, there is usually a pre-existing level of shared understanding; as a result, a lot of meaning in conversations, briefings and handovers can be conveyed implicitly (through assumptions, ‘shorthand’ jargon/acronyms and non-verbal communication) rather than explicitly .

Unfortunately, unidisciplinary teams tend to form ‘silos’—isolated hierarchies of expertise that communicate poorly with each other—a problem well known to healthcare [ 102 ].

7.3 Multidisciplinary Teams

In multidisciplinary teams people with diverse backgrounds and skills are brought together for a particular purpose. Leaders of such teams will usually not share the same background or experience with many of their team members. Members tend to have discrete technical roles rather than hold rank.

An operating theatre team is an example of a multidisciplinary team (containing unidisciplinary sub-teams—anaesthesia, surgery, nursing, wardsmen, etc.— as well as the patient). In healthcare the output of these teams is tailored to individual patients, and heavily influenced by the input of all individuals in the team who each play a discrete role. Frequently it is difficult (if not impossible) to substitute one team member for another, or to do without a member who has a specific technical role. Unless such teams have worked closely together for a while, there is often little shared understanding between team members; consequently, implicit communication is unreliable, especially early in the life of the team.

Multidisciplinary teams counteract the negative effects of silos and have been shown to improve patient outcomes in a range of in-hospital settings [ 103 ]. However, cohesive multidisciplinary teams are much harder to establish and maintain [ 104 ]. Successful multidisciplinary team leaders tend to employ situational leadership and transferable command and control (see below).

7.4 Committees

A committee is a group of interested but diverse individuals (‘stakeholders’) assembled in a structured forum governed by agreed rules and motions through which collective decisions can be made. The group is presided over by a chairperson with limited nominal authority. A committee has the anatomical appearance of a team but its individual members are under no obligation per se to function like one, unless the committee has been convened to perform a specific function (e.g. a ‘steering committee’ or a ‘task force’), and even that is no guarantee that it will function well. There is surprisingly little research on how healthcare committees function. ‘The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs’ [ 105 ].

7.5 Improving Team Performance

Developing a behavioural marker system for team performance in high-risk clinical environments such as the operating theatre has been an ongoing global endeavour for at least three decades ([ 10 , 14 , 106 , 107 ], [ 108 ]). The following is a summary of the more commonly used markers.

7.6 Calling for Help Early: Team Assembly

Declaring the need to form a team is a fundamental team competency. Calling for help early is the first step in the ‘chain of survival’ for improving outcomes from cardiac arrest ([ 109 , 110 ]). Other examples of team assembly include a trainee knowing when to call their on-call superior, or a practitioner calling a colleague for advice, or to assist them if they are feeling unwell or overwhelmed.

7.7 Team Structure: Clear Leader, Roles and Goals

In traditional command-and-control systems, a clear team structure and process is important. Trauma and resuscitation teams are more effective where there is a clearly defined team leader (see below) with other team members assuming functional roles [ 111 , 112 ]. Neonatal cardiothoracic teams that rehearsed a ‘pit-crew’ style handover process with designated roles resulted in a faster handover with fewer technical errors [ 113 ].

7.8 Team-Oriented Communication

Effective teams employ a number of team-oriented communication techniques such as briefings and handovers, specific/directed/acknowledged communication, tools for enquiry/advocacy/escalation of concern, etc. (see Sect. 30.6 above). It is important for the leader to create an atmosphere that fosters open exchange between team members [ 10 ] and encourages cooperative and assertive communication styles that are focused on the task at hand and ‘what is right’, rather than submissive and aggressive styles that are focused on power and ‘who is right’ [ 10 , 69 ].

7.9 Decision-Making

Decisions in teams are usually made by the leader, either autocratically or in consultation with other team members, depending on the urgency and clarity of the situation, and skills and experience of the team involved (see Sect. 30.7.15 below).

The emergence of shared decision-making between clinicians and patients in a range of healthcare domains [ 104 , 105 , 116 ] is further validation of incorporating patients and their families as part of the wider clinical team. This is a variant of consultative leadership where the physician informs and guides the patient along a process of making decisions about their own care, which are then executed by the rest of the team.

7.10 Managing Workload and Time

A team approach allows distribution of physical and cognitive workload across the human resources at hand [ 10 ]. For example, trauma teams work faster when members perform pre-allocated roles [ 117 ], and the time to complete the primary survey has a direct bearing on patient outcomes [ 118 , 119 ].

7.11 Team Situation Awareness

Getting all members of a team to share a mental model of what needs to be done by whom and how is fundamental to effective team function. In using the term ‘ shared mental model ’ one can reinterpret Endsley’s SA model of shared perceptions, shared comprehension and shared projection to infer the need for a ‘ team situation awareness ’ that evolves with time and new information just as individual SA does [ 120 ]. Creating a shared mental model has been shown to improve overall team performance in simulated settings, both in aviation [ 121 ] and in medical trauma [ 122 ]. Establishing and maintaining a dynamic and appropriate team SA may be considered an important communication role of the team leader (see below).

7.12 Team Familiarity, Group Climate and Interpersonal Conflict

People who work together regularly perform better together. Teams where members are already familiar with each other tend to use their (shared) cognitive resources more effectively, which in turn improves their performance [ 123 ]. Cumulative team experience and team familiarity significantly reduce surgical operative time [ 124 ]. Moreover, teams that are made up of friends usually perform better than teams of ad hoc acquaintances, especially in larger groups and with high-output/high-turnover tasks [ 125 ].

In a complex dynamic workplace, differences of opinion and indeed conflict are inevitable. With appropriate resolution practices in place, conflict can be marshalled as a positive way to sharpen clinical decision-making [ 126 ]. More usually however, conflict that involves intimidation, bullying or verbal abuse over time has been cited as a cause of occupational stress, which in turn increases absenteeism and staff turnover [ 127 , 131 ]. This effect appears to be more likely among female workers who have children [ 127 ], a dominant demographic of healthcare workers, especially in nursing and allied health. It seems intuitive that interpersonal conflict within healthcare teams would be a threat to patient safety; indeed surveys and structured interviews confirm that healthcare workers strongly hold this perception [ 128 , 129 ]. Interpersonal conflict is a key feature of whistle-blower cases of serious and serial patient harm [ 130 ]; however the conspicuous conflict in these cases is mostly a consequence of poor individual or team performance (and conflict over reporting this) rather than a cause . While there are some relevant case reports [ 132 ], there is to date surprisingly little systematic research linking team conflict to adverse patient outcomes; this would suggest an avenue for future study.

7.13 Debriefing

Debriefings are concise exchanges that occur after tasks or events, allowing team members to review what happened [ 67 ]. Debriefings may be psychological (especially after traumatic events), where team members are allowed a safe space to express their feelings about what occurred and to receive consolation and support; they may be technical (e.g. after a mission or procedure), where events and team/individual actions are systematically reviewed to improve future performance; or they may contain elements of both. Persons debriefing teams after a difficult clinical procedure, particularly where there was a negative patient outcome, should be prepared to conduct both a psychological and a technical debrief, or to defer one in favour of the other, as circumstances may demand. Debriefing may also be used to brainstorm new solutions to problems encountered during a procedure, or to consult experts from other clinical domains by the experts to enrich the collective wisdom of a care team. In this respect a well-run morbidity and mortality meeting can be viewed as a form of educational debriefing.

The benefit of providing single-session Critical Incident Stress Debriefing [ 133 ] or other variations of formalised psychological debriefing, which is standard procedure in many healthcare institutions to personnel after traumatic adverse events, has been brought into question in a number of studies [ 121 , 122 , 136 ]. For a healthcare manager faced with personnel exposed to a traumatic event, the most practical advice can be summarised as follows [ 135 ]:

The exposed person(s) should, in a timely and empathic manner, be offered information about the possible reactions they may experience, what they can do to help themselves if these occur, and where to get help if they want or need it.

Early support should be made ready and available, but instigating interventions, if at all, should be based on an accurate assessment of need. Different people cope with stress in different ways.

Interventions should be customised to the culture, personality and developmental level of the person.

A rapid recovery, or even freedom from distress, may not be desired outcomes. This will depend on the goals and motivations of the individual person.

Evaluate any interventions early and be prepared to abandon something that isn’t helping, and design a new intervention as needed.

Thus, with certain staff, and in the hands of an experienced, vigilant and compassionate facilitator, there may be greater therapeutic value in an informal but personalised debriefing process over time.

In any case it has been argued that putting the information gained from debriefing into an improvement process is more important than the debriefing itself [ 95 ]. A timely debriefing at the end of a session facilitates appropriate feedback [ 137 ] Teams should document items that did not go well and make suggestions for improvement. By documenting problems, teams can move towards fixing them and prevent issues later on [ 67 ].

7.14 Leadership, Command and Control

These are three distinct but overlapping concepts.

Leadership can be defined simply as the art of influencing others to achieve common objectives in specific situations. Dixon [ 138 ] observed that people who are chosen to be leaders tend to be ‘task specialists’ or ‘social specialists’ or, rarely, both. These two leader types correlate with more modern descriptors of ‘transactional’ (task-oriented) vs. ‘transformational’ (team/relationship-oriented) healthcare leaders [ 139 ]. Ideal leadership combines proficiency in technical command (see below) with at least two additional social roles—that of a ‘role model’ (someone who ‘shows the way’ by taking initiative and inspiring junior members of the team to follow a shared vision) and that of a ‘shepherd’ (someone who cares for and protects the team, and encourages an environment in which the team can be most productive).

It follows that just being a good technician/tactician without social skills, or an affable ‘people person’ without technical skills, does not per se make for a good clinical leader. [ 140 ] proposed a research-based framework for global evaluation of ED leadership behaviours that covers evaluation and planning behaviours (mission analysis, specifying goals, formulating strategy and reflection), action behaviours (patient and systems monitoring, providing guidance, error identification and coordination) and interpersonal skills (conflict resolution, affect management, motivation and communication).

Command is the exercise of authority in the course of a task or a mission. Exercising authority usually involves assessing a situation, making decisions, giving orders and evaluating performance. Thus, command entails more than the mere wielding of resources (the definition of control —see below). For example, a consultant anaesthetist who is supervising a resident intubating a patient is in command , while the resident holding the laryngoscope is in control . A lone anaesthetist intubating a patient has both command and control .

Command in complex emergencies can be divided into strategic (‘why are we doing this’), tactical (‘how are we doing this’) and operational (‘we’re doing this’). This command structure is known as ‘Gold-Silver-Bronze’ in the UK and its application has extended from police responses to civil unrest [ 141 ] to the NHS management of large-scale medical incidents [ 142 ]. These principles apply equally to smaller scale command challenges, such as the running of a clinical department or a busy outpatients clinic.

Control is the actual wielding of resources in the course of performing a task or series of tasks. For example, the person holding the laryngoscope has control of an intubation (whether or not they were directed by others to do it) but may command others to perform supporting manoeuvres (e.g. cricoid pressure), to get equipment or administer drugs.

Understanding how these concepts interact influences leadership practice. For example, it is often difficult to maintain strategic and tactical oversight of a complex task if one is burdened with being technically ‘hands-on’. Cardiac arrest teams whose leaders took an active part in resuscitating were often less well structured, less dynamic and performed resuscitation less effectively, leading to the concept of team leaders standing back and guiding the team remotely, or ‘lighthouse leadership’ [ 143 ]; this is now a standard part of advanced resuscitation team training.

7.15 Leadership Styles and Situational Leadership

Leadership styles can also be classified by the steepness of the authority gradient between the team leader and team members. In an autocratic style, the authority gradient is steep, i.e. the leader expects orders to be followed without question, and team members have little or no opportunity to query, challenge, or offer input to the leader. In a consultative style, the authority gradient is more shallow: the leader more actively solicits views and input from the team, and it is easier for team members to question or advocate suggestions, although the leader makes the final decision (‘everyone gets their say but not everyone gets their way’).

Which style is better? In one theoretical model, the answer depends on the situation. For example, in a complex ill-defined scenario involving an experienced multidisciplinary team, a consultative approach would seem more constructive; on the other hand, in a well-defined time-critical emergency with a novice team, invoking an autocratic drill would be more efficient. This is the concept of situational leadership —that good leaders adapt their style according to the available human resources and the needs of the situation [ 144 ].

Correlations have been found between Myers-Briggs personality types and leadership styles [ 145 ]. This suggests that clinicians in charge may gravitate naturally to one or other leadership style—autocratic or consultative, ‘task-specialist’ or ‘social-specialist’—according to their personality. It is important therefore for clinicians to recognise their own natural tendencies, and (e.g. through simulation) to seek out training in being the opposite ; naturally deferential types could practice being more assertive; naturally autocratic types could practice active listening. In this way the leader is better prepared to apply whatever appropriate style a situation may demand.

7.16 Transferable Command and Control

In helicopter medical retrievals, the pilot is in overall tactical command and can modify or abort the mission at any time. However, as the rescue moves through different phases, different team members hold operational command, directing other team members (even the pilot) during the performance of key tasks. The pilot is in charge of getting the team to the site; the winchman oversees getting the medical crew to ground; the medical officer assesses the patient and is in charge of initial resuscitation; the paramedic ensures the patient is safely secured on the stretcher; then it’s the winchman again, in charge of getting the patient and crew back into the helicopter; then back to the pilot, getting the chopper to the receiving hospital; and finally the medical officer is in charge of handing the patient over to the receiving emergency team. This concept of ‘taking the con’ is a form of transferable leadership [ 146 ] or transferable command and control , and can be applied to many multidisciplinary situations in healthcare, e.g. running an operating theatre, a busy diabetes outpatient clinic, or a community mental health service. It requires multidisciplinary team leaders to know and trust the different skill sets of their team members, and to balance autocratic and consultative leadership styles (see Sect. 30.7.15 —see above).

8 Teaching Non-technical Skills

Training to ensure effective decision-making for patient safety should contain components of deliberate practice and feedback [ 147 ]. It is essential to expand the number and range of scenarios that decision makers have in their repertoires, and to develop the sense of what is important. High- and low-fidelity simulations are increasingly being used for research and training in dynamic domains such as healthcare (e.g. operating rooms; [ 148 ]). Low-fidelity approaches such as the ShadowBox™ method are effective ways to expose decision makers to a range of possible decision scenarios with coaching from experts on cues to monitor, issues to worry about, and interpretations of ambiguous situations [ 149 , 150 ]. Higher-fidelity training may include contextual features, such as the hospital or operating environment, and incorporate communication and teamwork in realistic simulations.

Over the last decade there has been increasing interest in the interprofessional team training—doctors, nurses and allied staff training together as opposed to training within their craft groups—to overcome the challenges of cultivating effective multidisciplinary teams and patient-centred care, particularly in crisis management scenarios [ 151 , 152 ].

Supported by a large base of theoretical literature on human factors in both medical and non-medical domains, non-technical skills are fast becoming an established and indispensable building block of patient safety, and increasingly incorporated into many undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare curricula. A growing body of research suggests that good NTS training improves healthcare processes and outcomes, mostly in simulated environments, but also in real-world environments, especially in critical care fields such as anaesthesia, surgery and emergency medicine. While there remain substantial challenges in developing methodologies to better define and refine the role of NTS in improving healthcare outcomes, this domain is a rich seam for future study.

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Prineas, S., Mosier, K., Mirko, C., Guicciardi, S. (2021). Non-technical Skills in Healthcare. In: Donaldson, L., Ricciardi, W., Sheridan, S., Tartaglia, R. (eds) Textbook of Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59403-9_30

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74 Trending Non-Technical Presentation Topics for College and Work

If you are about to give a presentation as a student or employee, you need some topics that you feel comfortable presenting. If it’s possible, and you can select your topic, go for some non-technical topics for your presentation, first. 

When you want to make your presentation purely educational, that either educates or spreads awareness about a particular subject, the non-technical are the best topics to cover. In this article, we are sharing not just the best but the trending non-technical presentation topics for you. 

List of Non-Technical Presentation Topics

Here is the ultimate list of the presentation topics for your PPT, seminars, group discussions, or college projects. Whether you are looking for the right topic for your school or college presentation or need good group discussion at the office, we have a separate list of non-technical topics for that purpose.

General Non-Technical Topics for Students

For normal classroom discussions or PPT presentations, you need topics that your fellow students can relate to. You need topics to talk about some important topics or from current affairs. So here are the best general topics that make them worth presenting as part of your school or college project. 

• How to develop leadership skills in the young generation? 
• Type of population: Causes, effects, and solutions
• How’s the world doing after covid-19? 
• How does technology shape your life and the future?
• What makes learning a musical skill a must?
• How does tourism affect wildlife and how to stop it from getting worse? 
• Population growth: Dangers that waiting for us
• How to transform from reels to real life? 
• Child development in joint and nuclear family
• Copyright and trademark policies
• The dangers and best practices of Virtual reality
• What is green technology? 
• Are eco-friendly products eco-friendly? 
• Is it time to go for renewable energies? 
• How can work-life balance be possible? 

You can also use some of these AI tools to create PPT presentations faster.

Good Topics for Non-Technical Presentation for College 

If you need some good topics for your college presentation or research project, this is the list for you. Here are the non-technical topics that make meaningful presentations that your teachers might approve of due to their usefulness. 

• Developing the entrepreneurship skills
• How does social media invade your privacy? 
• Best practices and techniques to improve communication skills
• How does an online payment system work? The non-technical way.
• Discussing the investment options for you
• What is financial freedom? The concept you want to know. 
• How can you achieve financial freedom and its challenges? 
• Traditional ways of selling and e-commerce. 
• Jobs that AI could never take place of the humans
• Can any nation be self-reliant without any support? 
• The family business: Pros, cons and opportunities
• Cosmetic surgeries: The dark side of a shiny surface
• Why is going out of your comfort zone important?
• The implementation of human rights the right way
• What is the law of attraction? How does it work? 

You might also need these: Trending College Survey Topic Ideas

Non-Technical Topics for Presentation in Office 

As part of the employee interaction or to train the new employee, most companies arrange office presentations. If you are selected to give a presentation and you want your topics purely educational and non-technical, this list of the best covers some ideas for you.

• What is constructive criticism and its importance at work? 
• How to manage work life balance? 
• Is AI a threat to manpower and the future job market?
• Business First vs Employees First Policy
• What do modern workers expect from their employers?
• How to use AI to make the most out of your time?
• How can you do more in less with technology? 
• The danger or technological advancement in human skills
• Is the customer really kind? How to treat the kind right? 
• Is profit the only goal for the company? What else is more important? 
• How is competition so important in every industry? 
• Women’s empowerment at work
• What makes teamwork the most important factor for profit? 
• Are company employees the real investments?
• Employee involvement in business planning and strategizing

Non-Technical Presentation Topics for Engineering Students

Well, the engineering field is itself a technical subject. But still, it’s not challenging to find topics that are non-technical. There are some best non-technical topics you can discuss which are part of the engineering field, that most students won’t think of.

• How to improve the communication skills of college students? 
• What would be the world without engineers?
• The latest technology and gadgets that we might get to see shortly
• Are online customer reviews trustworthy? 
• How can you make the best out of your 24 hours? 
• The best care options engineers have despite their core skill
• Creative thinking a helpful or harmful feature
• How can local businesses use e-commerce? 
• What makes honesty the best policy for any connection? 
• How to secure your online identity and not be so vulnerable? 
• Are space projects and investments worth it?
• Should you judge someone based on their degree or certificate?
• The important changes that are a must in the education system
• Technologies that are so helpful in learning
• What makes engineering a unique field than the rest? 

For students of engineering, here are more presentation topics for engineering projects.

Best Non-Technical Topics for Group Discussion

If the purpose of the group discussion is to develop communication within the team, there must be good topics that most will relate to. If you expect the most participants to be involved in the group discussion, you can opt for the non-technical topics from this list.

• Is there anything good about social media?
• Developing the etiquette to use the mobile in a good manner. 
• How can students leverage online learning along the regular schooling? 
• Co-education or education based on gender?
• Importance of soft skills in child development
• Various types of vitamins and their importance
• Meditation and yoga: How can it change your life for good?
• What do we need to be happy in a real sense? 
• How to enjoy life and live it to the full extent? 
• Is rural development attainable? 
• How do you manage the money you earn in a real sense?
• What makes traveling the best practice to take a break from life? 
• Group discussion on any current affairs
• Are there any options for hard work? 

Final Thoughts

So that is for today’s post. Now you have the best and trending topics for non-technical presentations. Such types of presentations are a good choice for many reasons. Whether you are giving your first presentation or you want a topic that the general audience can relate to, you should pick non-technical topics that are good enough. 

You might be an engineering student or office employee, the non-technical presentation helps you to build confidence to present your thoughts and work on your presentation skills. If you find it challenging to give a detailed presentation or get used to creating PPTs, such a non-technical presentation could be a good starting point. 

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• Pricing & Plan

6 Tips to Present Technical Information to Non-Technical Audience

Each field has the technical languages that define it and help people to communicate. The great thing about technical languages and weird expressions is that they make the information clear and into the point. But the not very good thing about it is that not everyone can understand it. That’s why presenting technical information is not that easy!

Now think about it if you have a technical background and you need to present technical information to people who don’t understand this language. It’s exactly like giving a Spanish presentation to french people who don’t understand Spanish by the way, LoL!

So you tech dummies leave this part for us. In this article, we will show you how to present technical information to non-technical audiences easy and smooth. Here are six tips to do so.

• Start from scratch
• Make it related as much as possible
• Engage them
• Don’t Shower them with Data
• Read Your Audience

And now to 6 tips to rock your technical presentation

1- start from scratch.

• In the beginning, don’t assume that your audience has even basic technical knowledge or understanding of your language. They are a blain page most of the time attend your presentation for non-related technology reasons in the core.
• Prepare something like a quiz for your attendees before starting to determine their skill level.
• Having documentation of terms to use during the presentation can be a good idea. you can share it with them and make it easier to understand the terminologies.
• While speaking tech is kinda your nature, it seems intimidating to the non-technical audience

2- Make it related as much as possible

• To make Your non-technical audience more receptive to the information you are providing you need to tell them how it will help them achieve their goal or benefit their interest.
• Study the situation fully before starting presenting technical information. You need to know why these people decided to attend and listen to yo, what are their bain points or how they are related to what you are offering.
• Try to introduce terms that they will use in their everyday workday and tell them why they are related. This will make them feel excited about what they are receiving and will make sense to them.

3- Engage them

We know when presenting technical information and speaking tech language, there is the excitement of using numbers and charts everywhere. They represent performances and results, really cool hah! But to the non-technical audience, it’s really hard to keep up with you. They need to see simple visuals and icons more.

Representing information by using illustrations. Easy and fun slides and more importantly let them share what they see and how they see it. Mostly this way fit all learners and make the information stick to the head.

4- Don’t Shower them with Data

All of us the tech dummies, feel the rush to share complex data to make a point, but if this data is not digested we never make that point!

To present technical information, of course, numeric and complex data is involved. You have to hold your breath and find a smart way to present it. You may utilize a tool that enables you to personalize dashboards and reports such as using customized templates from Premast .

By creating the right visuals with your data, you can encourage your non-technical audience by only showing important and relevant information. Which resulted, attendees, can create easily reports that highlight the most important information.

5- Be Humble

Each one on this earth is good at something but there is this theory that techies are smarter and have larger brains. While the brain thing is maybe right, I mean how else we would hold all of this technical information and speak such spooky languages! But intelligence vary and we all know this now.

You need to break the ice and show that we all are equal it is just you are more into this. If your non-technical audience feels that they been talking down, it will immediately turn them off and make them feel they will never get it. Plus they won’t fully in love with you here, assuming they are not as smart. So taking it easy and breaking the ice should create a vibe of mutual interest and support throughout presenting technical information.

6- Read Your Audience

This tip actually works for any presenter but let’s where you choose and talk technical. You remember back at school when first took the division, the long one! It was hard to keep up before understanding the mechanism of it. okay, that happens tell know when we don’t understand something. Maybe we are not kids anymore but we will act lost too.

When presenting technical information you need to track the reactions, facial expectations, and how much they participate. Be attentive to your audience. Focus on how your voice and body language affect their reception. This is the key to deliver the information needed, to know when to state a fact, when to tell a story and when to make them engage.

Presenting technical information is a powerful thing to do, you help people get the harvest of years and years of searching and involving. Understanding the great role you may be playing in your audience minds as each information will lead to a conclusion mostly they didn’t know before listening to you, will help you stay active and present these technicalities with enthusiasm and eagerness. Prepare your tools, study your audience, and start spreading the light on non-technical minds.

Bonus: Prepare your content to fit their style and preferences, you can check Premast templates for different fields, styles, and categories.

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Meaning of non-technical in English

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• Despite it being a high-tech company , the sales team mostly have non-technical backgrounds .
• The product is not the easiest for those of us who are non-technical to use.
• You must be able to communicate clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences .
• It's an excellent , non-technical overview of the education technology industry .
• He describes the phenomenon using clear , nontechnical prose .
• A surgeon also needs nontechnical skills such as good communication .
• Afrocentrism
• applicative
• hard science
• historiography
• orientalist
• suicidology
• technically
• the performing arts

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Technical vs. Non-Technical: Differentiating Roles

Gone are the days when organizations relied solely on technical expertise to excel in the ever-evolving business landscape. Today, there is a growing recognition of the importance of diverse skill sets in driving success. This has given rise to a clear distinction between technical and non-technical roles within companies. While technical roles primarily involve working with technology, non-technical roles focus on other aspects of business operations. In this article, we will explore the key differences between these two types of positions and why they matter.

Understanding Technical Roles

Technical roles, as the name suggests, are centered around technical expertise and proficiency in specific fields. These roles typically require a deep understanding of complex systems, tools, and processes. Individuals in technical roles possess highly specialized skills and knowledge, which enable them to solve intricate problems and develop innovative solutions. Examples of technical roles include software engineers, data scientists, cybersecurity analysts, and network administrators.

Technical professionals often work behind the scenes, using their technical know-how to design, build, and maintain the infrastructure that supports various business operations. They are responsible for developing software applications, securing networks, analyzing data, and ensuring the smooth functioning of critical IT systems. Their expertise is crucial in keeping organizations competitive and at the forefront of technological advancements.

Non-Technical Roles: The Wider Picture

On the other hand, non-technical roles encompass a broad range of responsibilities that do not necessarily require deep technical knowledge. These roles focus more on the management, communication, and strategy aspects of a business. Non-technical professionals excel in areas such as project management, marketing, human resources, sales, and customer relations.

Although non-technical roles may not directly involve hands-on technical work, they are instrumental in driving business growth. These professionals bridge the gap between technology and business objectives, ensuring effective communication and coordination between technical and non-technical teams. They translate complex technical concepts into simple terms, allowing stakeholders to make informed decisions.

Key Differences: Technical vs. Non-Technical Roles

Now that we have a basic understanding of technical and non-technical roles, let’s delve deeper into the key differences between these two types of positions:

While technical roles are focused on leveraging technology to drive innovation and solve complex problems, non-technical roles prioritize effective communication, collaboration, and strategy. Both types of roles are essential for organizations to thrive in today’s highly interconnected and fast-paced world.

Collaboration: The Key to Success

Although technical and non-technical roles have their distinct characteristics, their collaboration and synergy are vital for the success of any organization. In fact, the convergence of technical and non-technical expertise is often the catalyst for groundbreaking innovations and transformative changes in businesses.

Imagine a technical team working tirelessly to develop a cutting-edge software application. While their technical prowess is commendable, their efforts may fall short if they lack the input and guidance from non-technical professionals. It is the synergy between technical and non-technical roles that ensures the application meets user needs, is intuitive to use, and aligns with the organization’s overall objectives.

Similarly, non-technical professionals benefit immensely from the expertise of their technical counterparts. Whether it’s understanding the possibilities and limitations of technology or evaluating the feasibility of novel ideas, the collaboration with technical teams provides valuable insights and helps in making informed decisions.

Nurturing Technical and Non-Technical Talent

Recognizing the value of both technical and non-technical roles, organizations are increasingly investing in nurturing talent in both areas. This involves providing relevant training and development opportunities to individuals aspiring to grow in their respective fields.

For those interested in pursuing technical roles, acquiring specialized knowledge through formal education, certifications, and practical experience is crucial. Staying updated with the latest advancements in their field is also essential for technical professionals to remain at the forefront of innovation.

On the other hand, individuals aspiring to excel in non-technical roles can benefit from developing a diverse skill set. Effective communication, leadership abilities, strategic thinking, and problem-solving skills are some of the key areas that non-technical professionals should focus on honing.

Finding the Right Balance

Building a well-rounded team that combines both technical and non-technical expertise is essential for organizations to thrive. Striking the right balance ensures that diverse perspectives are considered, enabling comprehensive problem-solving and innovative thinking.

It is important for organizations to foster an inclusive culture where individuals from different backgrounds and skill sets feel valued and appreciated. By creating an environment that encourages collaboration and respects the contributions of technical and non-technical professionals alike, organizations can unlock their full potential and achieve long-term success.

In conclusion, the distinction between technical and non-technical roles is crucial in recognizing the diverse skill sets required for organizations to thrive in today’s business landscape. While technical roles focus on specialized technical expertise and problem-solving, non-technical roles emphasize management, communication, and strategy. Collaboration between technical and non-technical professionals is the key to unlocking innovation and driving success. By nurturing talent in both areas and fostering a culture of inclusivity, organizations can harness the power of these distinct roles and achieve their strategic objectives.

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170+ Non Technical Topics with ppt or Presentation (2024)

List of Non Technical Topics with ppt or Presentation (2024) : Hello Friends, we know that so far we have just worked for engineering students and all those people who belongs to some technical courses or degrees. But from now we will be working for everyone student or person who is willing to give a ppt presentation .

Also See: EVS Project Topics

We have started making this list of non technical seminar topics with ppt presentation (2024) . This page will be full of non technical topics and you will get huge list of non technical seminar topics for presentation as day passes.

General Topics                    Mechanical Engineering            

CSE                                       Electronics

Civil Engineering                MBA

List of Non Technical Topics with ppt or Presentation (2024)

• Social Media
• Business Plan
• Entrepreneurship
• Communication Skills
• Marketing Strategy
• Disaster Management
• Classroom Management
• Principles of Management
• Greenhouse Effect
• Air Pollution
• Water Pollution
• Materials Management
• Operations Management
• Inventory Management
• Logistics Management
• Researched Methodology
• Soft Skills
• IR spectroscopy
• Climate Change
• Child Labour
• Global Warming
• Chromatography
• Natural Resources
• International law
• Thermal Pollution
• Marine Pollution
• Noise Pollution
• Land Pollution
• Sources of Water
• Radioactive Pollution
• Organic Farming
• Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF)
• Genomic Library
• Download Refactoring to Patterns

Electrophoresis Ppt

Also See: Class 12 Chemistry Project Topics

If you need a separate report of these topics then comment below, we will give you a separate report of these non technical topics too.