Abstract
Nursing students experience difficulties when communicating in clinical practice. Their self-efficacy in clinical communication should be explored as part of their competence assessment before they are exposed to real human interactions in the clinical setting. The aim of this study was to design and psychometrically evaluate a toolkit to comprehensively assess nursing students’ self-efficacy in clinical communication. The study followed an observational cross-sectional design. A sample of 365 nursing students participated in the study. The ‘Clinical Communication Self-Efficacy Toolkit’ (CC-SET) was comprised of three tools: the ‘Patient-Centered Communication Self-efficacy Scale’ (PCC-SES), the ‘Patient clinical Information Exchange and interprofessional communication Self-Efficacy Scale’ (PIE-SES), and the ‘Intrapersonal communication and Self-Reflection Self-Efficacy Scale’ (ISR-SES). The tools’ reliability, validity (content, criterion, and construct) and usability were rigorously tested. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the three tools comprising the CC-SET was very high and demonstrated their excellent reliability (PCC-SES = 0.93; PIE-SES = 0.87; ISR-SES = 0.86). The three tools evidenced to have excellent content validity (scales’ content validity index > 0.95) and very good criterion validity. Construct validity analysis demonstrated that the PCC-SES, PIE-SES, and ISR-SES have a clear and theoretically-congruent structure. The CC-SET is a comprehensive toolkit that allows the assessment of nursing students’ self-efficacy in interpersonal, interprofessional, and intrapersonal communication.
Highlights
All nurses are expected to be competent in clinical communication [1]
It is important for nursing educators to foster the acquisition of competence in clinical communication amongst nursing students before they are faced with real human interactions during their clinical placements [17]
This study aims to design and psychometrically evaluate a toolkit to comprehensively assess nursing students’ self-efficacy in clinical communication
Summary
All nurses are expected to be competent in clinical communication [1]. This means that they have to be able to effectively communicate with patients, patients’ relatives and colleagues, as well as with themselves as part of the self-reflection process [2,3]. Clinical communication education has become an integral part of undergraduate nursing programs [10]. In recent years, significant efforts have been made to design, implement, and evaluate innovative educational strategies that have aimed to foster the acquisition and retention of competence in clinical communication amongst nursing students [11,12,13]. Public Health 2019, 16, 4534; doi:10.3390/ijerph16224534 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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