Nursing Students Communication Skills with Patients in Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: Communication skills as an essential part in providing nursing care and ineffective communication consider as a powerful barrier to health care. The aimed of this study was to determine the status of nursing students' communication skills. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done on 200 nursing students that were selected through convenience sampling at Kermanshah university of medical sciences in 2015. Data collection tools were standardized questionnaire including demographic and self-assessment student’s communication skills with patients. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and analytical statistics (Chi-square, and Pearson correlation), at 0.05 significance level through SPSS. Results: 54.3% of students were female, 13.1% married and 79.4% native to Kermanshah province. 85.1% and 14.9% of students had poor and average communication skills respectively. Findings show that there is significant relationship between gender (p<0.002),married status (p<0.024) and academic year (p<0.001) and communication skill mean of female students was higher than male students.). Participants obtained 50.3, 37.6, 41.2, 34.7, 51.5 and 41.7 percent of the maximum score for domains; starting conscious, verbal and nonverbal communication skills, inner and outer harmony, respect for patient, unconditional acceptance patient and overall score of communication skills questionnaire. Conclusion: According to the results, the communication skills was poor among students and the most weakness of communication skills related to verbal and non verbal skills and respect for the client. This weakness can be barrier for effective communication of nursing students with the patients.