Nurses’ Communication Skills in Providing Care for Patients at the End of Life and Their Families in Bangkok
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Abstract
This descriptive research aimed to describe the nurse’s communication skills in caring for terminally ill patients and their families. Participants consisted of 165 nurses who had experience of providing care for terminally ill patients and their families. Instruments used for collecting data included: 1) the demographic data form and 2) the Skill Assessment Form of Nurses in Communicating with Terminally Ill Patients and Their Families (SCT-Nurse). The SCT-Nurse was assessed for validity by five experts, yielded CVI of .97 and the SCT-nurse was evaluated for internal reliability among thirty nurses, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .96. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics.
The results of the study found that the overall nurses’ communication skills for caring of terminally ill patients was at a moderate level (Mean = 93.29, SD = 21.79). When classified based on each component of communication skills, nurses’ communication skills in families with interaction problems and communication skills of empathy were at a high level, whereas nurses’ communication skills regarding end-of-life care and advance care planning was at a moderate level (Mean = 39.21, SD = 8.82; Mean = 28.80, SD = 5.42; Mean = 25.28, SD = 10.14, respectively). The results of this study can be used as information for developing nurses’ communication skills to enhance care outcomes among patients at the end of life and their families.
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