The Effectiveness of Social Competence Training based on Felner Model on Communication Skills and Social Adjustment of Nurses in the Psychiatric ward of Selected Hospitals of Aja

Communication skills and social compatibility have long been recognized as an important part of medical and nursing care. Nursing, due to its feature, requires high social compatibility, specially nurses in psychiatric ward whose main responsibilities are to create a relationship based on trust and motivation in patients to participate in the treatment process. In the Fellner Social Competence Model, various components and dimensions of social adequacy are identified and, accordingly, the necessary training is provided for the development of social skills.

The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Social Competence training based on Felner Model on Communication Skills and Social Adjustment of nurses in the psychiatric ward.

This study was a quasi-experimental study. Sixty selected nurses in the psychiatric ward of the AJA hospitals (in 2018) were included in the study and equally divided into the experimental and control hospitals. The experimental group was trained in a two-month 10 sessions, each 60 minutes based on Felner Social Competence Model and Barton Communication Skills questionnaire and Bell Social Adjustment questionnaire were used for data collection. Then, data were analyzed based on descriptive and inferential statistics using SPSS 25.

The result of independent and dependent t tests showed that Social Competence training based on Felner Model significantly improved the mean scores of Communication Skills and Social Adjustment after the intervention (P<0.05). A precise examination of the sub-components of communication skills showed that in all of the sub-components, the scores increased after the intervention but this increase was only significant for the sub-component of listening skills (P=0.01).
Discussion and

Felner Social Competence training is an effective way to improve the Communication Skills and the Social Adjustment of nurses in psychiatric ward. Thus, experts and health professionals can use Felner Social Competence training as an effective way to improve the Communication Skills and the Social Adjustment of their nurses in the psychiatric ward.