Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
Communication skills are an essential element of professionalism. The goal of the problem-based learning (PBL) model is to provide nursing students with the communication skills needed in the helping process. This article addresses the structure of communication skills training at the Dokuz Eylül University School of Nursing. There, students work within a module, first determining the part of the scenario related to communication, adapting this as a learning topic, and then learning the communication skills related to that topic on a cognitive level. Acommunication laboratory has been set up to permit implementation of the communication skills related to the topic within each learning module. This is necessary because communication requires both knowledge and skill development. Another important facet of communication skills training in this PBL model is that this training occurs during a 4-year learning period. In keeping with the structure of the PBL curriculum, the aim of this study was to provide students first with the skills for self-communication, then for communication with other healthy individuals and groups, and finally, for communication with individuals and groups with specific problems.
The knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes that facilitate effective professional performance and mastery of tasks are collectively called professional skill. The development of communication skills, only one dimension of professional skill, is one of the core aims of nursing education. This is because nursing, a profession contingent on the relationship of two individuals, is accordingly entirely dependent on communication skills. Effective communication skills are the most important tools with which health care professionals can transfer knowledge into implementation.
Communication is a powerful therapeutic tool and a nursing skill necessary for reaching positive health goals and being able to affect others. Effective interpersonal communication is the focal point of health care. Communication skills are one of the fundamental elements in the daily performance of nurses and other health care professionals.
Patients and their families are more often uncomfortable with health care professionals' manner of communication than with their level of knowledge. Most patients find it difficult to gather the courage to ask questions of these professionals, and often find that they have not understood what has been said to them or that they cannot make themselves understood (Ozcan, 1992; Tattersall & Ellis, 1998; Terakye, 1991).