The effect of blended educational methods in communication skills in nursing with students' interactions with patients: A quasi-experimental study.

Abstract

Background: Regarding the importance of effective communication in delivering satisfactory nursing care, the current study aims to assess the effect of blended educational methods (lecturing, workshop, role-playing, and group discussion) in nursing students' communication skills course.

Materials and methods: This educational evaluation study was conducted in two educational steps using the quasi-experimental method in Ramsar School of Nursing and Midwifery in 2015. In the first step, communication skills were taught in blended educational methods to all newly admitted nursing students of the fall semester (n = 33). In the second step, after 2 weeks, to evaluate the educational outcome, the communication skills of the students as an experimental group were compared with those of students in the fifth semester as a control group who did not receive any communication skills training (n = 25).

Results: The results of the paired sample t-test showed a significant difference in the scores for the pre-test and post-test (P < .001). The results of an independent t-test do not indicate any significant difference between the two groups. Only in the listening skills domain, for the item "Avoiding interrupting the audience", there was a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group (P = 0.04). Two-way multivariate analysis of variance based on Wilks Lambda effect shows that only gender has a significant effect in communication skills terms (F (7, 45) =2.590, P < .001, η²= 0.287).

Conclusion: According to the results, participating in blended methods for communication skills courses can be as effective in improving communication skills as 2 years of experiential learning of communication skills.