Nominal group technique

Committee‐work which involves decision‐making from a range of alternatives is frequently time‐consuming, inefficient, and frustrating. Nominal Group Technique is a structured method of group decision‐making which allows a rich generation of original ideas, balanced participation of all members of the group, and a rank‐ordered set of decisions based on a mathematical voting method. A brief description of a Nominal Group Technique session is given and its application to decision‐making by committees of anaesthetists is illustrated by an example.