Non-technical skills are an important component of surgical skill, particularly in relation to the development and maintenance of a surgeon's situational awareness. Experience from other industries suggests that it may be possible to improve the ability of surgeons to manage their own situation awareness, through training, intraoperative briefings and intraoperative workload management. In the future, it may be possible to use non-technical performance as a surrogate measure for technical performance, either for early identification of surgical difficulties, or as a method of evaluation by which non-surgically trained observers.