Thesis & Dissertations

In Nursing, communication is a primary means through which the nurse-patient relationship occurs, assuming major significance in demonstrating a caring and a therapeutic approach. The present study aimed to assess nurses’ communication skills as perceived by the patients and identify nurses' self assessment of their communication skills in dealing with patients. This was a descriptive research design. It included 90 nurses from medical -surgical departments in two health care settings; a private (45) and a governmental (45) hospitals and 90 patients cared by these nurses. “Assessment of Nurses’ Communication Skills Checklist” was an adapted tool from Kalamazoo conference. It comprised nine sets of essential dimensions (elements) of nurses’ communication skills with their tasks or items. It consisted of two parts; part I was prepared to suit the nurses, part II was modified into Arabic language to suit the studied patients. They were then submitted to test content validity and applicability. Ethical considerations were secured. Each nurse was self-evaluating his/her communication skills by the 3- Likert scale in part I, similarly each patient did in part II. Data started April 2012 for nine months. The main findings were the mean scores of nurses was Good (6.47), while the mean scores of patients was fair (5.54). This difference was highly statistically significant. Accordingly it was also concluded that highly educated nurses in MGH were double those of RHUH, the differences between nurses and patients for the nine essential elements of communication skills were statistically significant, a result which lead to further analytical steps. It was also recommended to apply the same study on a larger sample including different hospital units.