Evaluation of communication training programs in nursing care: a review ofthe literature

An important aspect of nursing care is communication with patients. Nurses' major communication tasks are not only to inform the patient about his/her disease and treatment, but also to create a therapeutically effective rela tionship by assessing patients' concerns, showing understanding, empathy, a nd providing comfort and support. In this review, 14 studies, which focus o n the evaluation of the effects of communication training programs for nurs es, have been evaluated. The selected studies were screened on several inde pendent, process and outcome variables as described by Francke et al. [8]. In this way not only is the training program taken into account as a variab le which may be responsible for nurses' behavioural change and for changes in patient outcomes, but also a range of other variables which can give mor e nuanced explanations for a training program's degree of effectiveness. On the whole, the studies reviewed showed limited or no effects on nurses' sk ills, on nurses' behavioural changes in practice, and on patient outcomes. Finally, the majority of the studies had a weak design. The use of experime ntal research designs should be pursued in future studies in order to elimi nate the influence of confounding variables. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Irel and Ltd. All rights reserved.