The Effectiveness of Communication Skills Training on Nurses’ Skills and Participation in the Breaking Bad News

Nurses have an important role in the process of providing information and helping  patients prepare for and receive bad news and understand and cope with the bad news they have  been given. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of communication skills training on  the level of skill and participation of nurses in breaking bad news.

This  semiexperimental study was performed on 60 nurses working in educational hospitals of Birjand,  Iran in 2019. Convenience sampling was performed and the participants were randomly assigned  to the two groups of intervention and control. For the experimental group, an integrated workshop  on communication skills was held. Before and after the intervention, the Setting, Patient  Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Empathy, and Strategy (SPIKES) SPIKES questionnaire  (breaking bad news skills) and the questionnaire of participation in breaking bad news were  completed. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (independent  t‑test) in SPSS software.

The mean (SD) of breaking bad news skills after the intervention  was 57.42 (10.13) in the control group and 65.12 (5.68) in the experimental group and the  between‑group difference was statistically significant (t</em>  59,41 = 3.93, p </em>< 0.001). After the intervention,  the mean (SD) of nurses’ participation in delivering bad news was 21.17 (5.21) in the control group  and 25.77 (4.96) in the experimental group and the between‑group difference was statistically  significant (t</em>  75,48 = 3.94, p </em>< 0.001).

It seems that to increase the ability of nurses in the  process of breaking bad news, it is necessary to teach them communication skills.