Comparing the Effectiveness of Teaching Communication by Peer and Teacher on Nurses’ Awareness and Patients’ Satisfaction

Recently, peer-assisted teaching and learning has become very important in nursing. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the effect of peer-assisted teaching of a communication protocol on nurses' awareness and patients' satisfaction.  Nurses of the three hospitals Payambar-e-A'zam, Shafa and Azali Pour in the city of Kerman and 330 hospitalized patients in these three hospitals participated in this empirical study. At first, the awareness level of the nurses and the patients' satisfaction of these three hospitals were measured. Then, the three hospitals were assigned to one of the three categories of peer-centered, teacher-centered and the control. After teaching, satisfaction and awareness levels of the patients and the nurses were measured again. The collected data were compared in the SPSS software using ANOVA tests and paired t-tests. There was a significant difference between the patients' satisfaction level before and after teaching the communication protocol to the nurses in the two intervention groups, and satisfaction level increased. However, satisfaction level of the control group after the intervention not only did not increase but also significantly decreased. Also, there was no significant difference in the nurses' awareness before and after the intervention in the three groups. However, awareness after the intervention was different, in a way that the peer-assisted and the teacher groups had higher levels of awareness than the control group. In this study, teaching by teachers and peers increased patients’ satisfaction. However, the awareness of the nurses in the intervention groups was not different.