Non-technical skills and recruitment of anaesthesia trainees.

Editor—There are several flaws in Gales paper on testing non-technical skills for recruitment of anaesthesia trainees, most of which have been recognized in a similar work in industry and are acknowledged by the authors. 1 The most fundamental problem with their methodology is 'restriction in range'. The authors tested 224 candidates, appointed 68 and rejected 156. They followed up the 68 selected candidates but have no idea if the 156 they rejected performed worse in the subsequent years (selection test valid) or better (selection test flawed) than those they appointed. The authors note that this is a recognized limitation of 'selection research'. Medicine is, however, probably the one career where all the rejected candidates could be followed up moderately easily (the Deanery would have information as to where they all ended up, and if they stayed in anaesthesia they would all have had ITAs and ARCPs and all could have consented to sharing this information with the researchers whether selected or not). I am a firm believer in the value of non-technical skills in anaesthesia and applaud the authors for taking the first small step in investigating if they can usefully be assessed as part of the selection process for trainees. This study, however, does not validate the selection process used, which should not be rolled out. No similar studies should be undertaken without provision for assessment of rejected candidates.