THE EFFECT OF IMPLEMENTING COMPETENCY BASED EDUCATION MODEL ON NURSING STUDENTS COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Communication skills are the cornerstone of the entire adequate clinical measures and have an important role in health sector. Therefore, educating communication skills to the students improve the efficiency of the education system. In this regard, Competency-Based Education Model (CBEM) is a new educational model that aims to reach desired clinical role. This study aims to determine the effect of implementing competency-based education model on nursing students’ communication skills in Urmia Medical Sciences University. In this quasi-experimental study with post-test design; 34 senior nursing students, who met the inclusion criteria, were selected through census and divided into two groups as control and experimental. The control group received traditional education and the experiment group received competency-based education for their coronary care unit course. The students’ communication skills score were measured through a researcher-made data collecting instrument (self-report questionnaire with likert rating scale). The collected data was analyzed by SPSS (19) software using descriptive and inferential statistics (Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Chi square and independent t-test). The results indicate that communication skills of students in the experimental group was significantly higher than students in the control group (P=0.007). CBEM better than the conventional model improves the students’ communication skills. Therefore, it is suggested to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of clinical courses by taking advantage of this educational.