Although non-technical skills (NTS) have been introduced in hospitals and other clinical settings as a method to reduce errors caused by human factors, NTS have yet to be introduced in community pharmacies, and there are few studies related to NTS in community pharmacies.

Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between incidents and NTS in community pharmacies. In Company K, which operates six community pharmacies, 67 incidents were submitted from pharmacies to the headquarters between October 2019 and September 2020; these incidents were analyzed by two evaluators, and the results indicated that NTS were associated with more than 80% of the incidents. Assessments using the kappa statistic showed a moderate level of inter-evaluator agreement. The NTS-related incidents were classified based on the NTS categories proposed by Flin et al., and the top three categories of “situational awareness”, “decision making”, and “leadership” accounted for more than 70% of the total. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between incidents and NTS in community pharmacies. In the future, it will be necessary to study and develop frameworks and systematic educational programs for NTS tailored to community pharmacies.