Abstract
Background & Objective:Effective communication in the nursing profession is not just a personal skill but is accepted as a learned and gained technique in the instructional process. It is possible for nurses to professionally provide effective and quality service with the establishment, development, and transfer to emotion of effective communication with people. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between levels of alexithymia and communication skills of nursing students.Methods:This cross-sectional study was conducted among students attending the School of Nursing in a university in Turkey in the 2017-2018 Spring semester. A total of 634 nursing students participated in the study. The data in the study were collected with the “Student Introduction Form”, the “Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS)” and the “Communication Skills Scale (CSS)”. Means, standard deviations, t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation analysis were used for the analysis.Results:The mean TAS scores of the nursing students were found to be 56.31±8.82, and the students had “moderate alexithymia” based on the average scores of the scale. The mean CSS scores of the nursing students in the study was found to be 91.16±12.99, and the students had “Good level of communication” based on the average scores of the scale. In our study, a negative and moderate correlation between the levels of alexithymia of nursing students and their communication skills was detected (p: 0.001).Conclusion:It was found that as the levels of alexithymia of nursing student increased, their communication skills decreased.
Highlights
Effective communication in the nursing profession is not just a personal skill but is accepted as a learned and gained technique in the instructional process.[1,2] It is possible for nurses to professionally provide effective, constant and quality service through establishing, developing and transferring emotions of effective communication with people
The Cronbach alpha value for the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) is 0.78.18 There are seven items in the Difficulty Recognizing Emotions (DRE), five items in the Difficulty Expressing Emotions (DEE), and eight items in the Extroverted Thought Structure (ETS), which are all sub-dimensions of the scale.[18]
It was reported that the highest average scores that students received from the TAS subdimensions were in the subdimensions of ETS (25.67±4.34), DRE (19.08±5.64), and DEE (14.33±2.65), respectively
Summary
Effective communication in the nursing profession is not just a personal skill but is accepted as a learned and gained technique in the instructional process.[1,2] It is possible for nurses to professionally provide effective, constant and quality service through establishing, developing and transferring emotions of effective communication with people. It is possible for nurses to professionally provide effective and quality service with the establishment, development, and transfer to emotion of effective communication with people. Results: The mean TAS scores of the nursing students were found to be 56.31±8.82, and the students had “moderate alexithymia” based on the average scores of the scale. The mean CSS scores of the nursing students in the study was found to be 91.16±12.99, and the students had “Good level of communication” based on the average scores of the scale. Conclusion: It was found that as the levels of alexithymia of nursing student increased, their communication skills decreased
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