Level of Nurses to Patients Communication and Perceived Barriers in Government Hospitals of Bahir Dar City, Ethiopia, 2020

Abstract

Background: Communication is the process of exchanging information or messages from one group to the other through mutually understood verbal or non-verbal ways. Communication barrier is anything that prevents receiving and understanding the messages. poor communication between patients and the nurses’ result in an increased length of stay, wastage of the resource, patient dissatisfaction, absence of confi dence, and frustration for both the nurses and the patients. This study will provide basic information on the level of nurses to patients’ communication and perceived barriers in government hospitals of Bahir Dar city. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the level of the nurse to patient communication and perceived barriers in government hospital of Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia, 2020. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional mixed-methods study was conducted from February 24 – March 9/2020 in government hospitals of Bahir Dar city. A total of 380 nurses were included in the quantitative study by using simple random sampling. For both the quantitative and qualitative study, at the initial stage of data collection and interview; informed consent was obtained from respondents. Data were entered into Epi Data 4.6 and analyzed with a statistical package of social science version 25. Data were mainly analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression. For the qualitative study, purposive sampling technique was employed, and 7 participants were interviewed. Thematic analysis was used. Results: From the total participants 36.5% of nurses were found to have poor communication. Variables which have statistically signifi cant associations with the level of communication were educational level, work experience, the unwillingness of nurses, and lack of communication skill. The highest perceived communication barriers were lack of continuous training with 82.7% followed by workload with 80.7% and lack of medical facilities with 79.2% as reported by nurses. All environmental-related barriers were the perceived barriers of the nurse to patient communication. Conclusion: In this study, the communication of nurses to patients is found to low. To enhance communication with the patients; nurses and other stakeholders like the ministry of health, the health bureau, and hospital authorities need to recognize the communication barriers. Giving awareness on the communication barrier for the nurses