Soft skills during residency in Spain: an analysis of the specialized training programmes

In recent years, the importance of soft skills in reducing errors and consequently improving clinical practice has become increasingly evident. Residents should be trained in these skills during their specialised training. The aim of our research was to determine the prevalence of these soft skills in residency training programmes in Spain. This descriptive, cross-sectional observational study reviewed the training programmes for Health Sciences specialties at the National Council of Specialties in Health Sciences to identify the presence of five soft skills: situational awareness, decision-making, teamwork, communication and leadership. To this end, systematic keyword searches were performed on all documents. A total of 56 training programmes were included in this study. Most of the training programmes were published in 2006 and 2007 (23 programmes, 41.0%) with only three (6.0%) published in the last three years. The most prevalent skills were communication (35 programmes, 62.5%) and teamwork (23 programmes, 41.1%), followed by decision-making (15 programmes, 26.8%) and leadership (11 programmes, 19.6%). However, only one programme (1.8%) mentions situational awareness. No programme addresses all five skills and only four (7.1%) address four of them. In contrast, 14 programmes (25.0%) do not mention any of the skills. Compared with other categories, nursing training programmes stand out by addressing a higher average number of soft skills (3.3 ± 0.7). Soft skills are unevenly represented in Spanish specialised training programmes. Given their demonstrated importance in clinical practice, these findings suggest the need for developing training tools that support the training of specialists. We propose the use of micro-credentials to certify soft skills.