The Construction,Implementation And Evaluation Of An Empathic Communication Skills Training Course For Neonatal Nurse Based On Empathic Opportunity-respond Model

Objective Effective nurse-patient communication is essential for patient-centered care.Empathy has been regarded as a useful communication skill in clinical practice,and its benefits have valued in the Nursing field.However,nurses feel hard to establish empathic communication with the patient and their family members,also lack communication skills training.The situation is especially serious in the departments that usually adopt closed management,such as NICU.Thus,it is necessary to conduct a targeted and practical empathic communication skills training for nurse in these departments.This study used the Empathic opportunity-respond model to guide the construction,implementation,and evaluation of empathic communication skills training in NICU.The purpose of this research was to explore the pattern of nurse-parent empathic communication in NICU,design an empathic communication skills training and examine the efficacy of this training in simulation and clinical practice.Methods This study was divided into three parts:1)the first part was a descriptive research.Nurse-parent communication recordings were collected by non-participatory and structured observational method.After the empathic communication coding system(ECCS)was converted to Chinese version,it was utilized to code the parent-created empathic opportunities and nurse's empathic responses;2)the second part was a quasi-experimental research.The empathic communication skills training for neonatal nurses was constructed and conducted in NICU,and then using Kirkpatrik model(ie.,reaction to training and learning)to evaluate the effectiveness of training in simulation environment;3)the third part also was a quasi-experimental research.Before and after training,Nurse-parent interactions were audio-recorded by researcher using non-participatory and structured observational method.The ECCS and Comskil Coding System(CCS)were used to code and analyze the nurses'empathic expression in clinical practice.It could further evidence the effectiveness of training we designed before.Results 1)In total,the encounters between 35 neonatal nurses and thirty-eight parents were recorded,and 44 empathic opportunities-response sequences were identified.Parents explicitly expressed statement of challenge(31.80%),emotion(27.3%)and indirect(27.3%)most frequently.Statement on the type of,progress and nurse-elicit occurred less frequently.Most neonatal nurse responses were implicated recognition(36.4%),acknowledged without pursuit(20.5%)and perfunctory(20.5%).Parent's statement of emotion received higher level of empathic responses than other types.2)After the course,results indicated that 93.70%of nurses were satisfied with empathic communication course.90.6%?100%of nurses reported their attitude toward communication have changed and feeling confidence in using skill(Z=-4.762,P<0.01).The majority of nurses(93.7-100%)admitted that the skills they had learned can affect their communication process.The course have changed the nurse's communication behavior(P<0.01)and increased usage rate of empathic communication.3)After training,the hierarchical scores of nurses'empathic responses to parent-created opportunities increased after training((Z=-3.519,P<0.01)).Additionally,nurses' use of empathy communication skills was significantly increased during the nurse-parent interactions in the following four of the five skills:acknowledgement,validation,normalization and praising of parents'efforts(P<0.01)Conclusion Empathic communication course based on Empathic opportunity-respond model provides an easily practical intervention for improving nurse-patient communication and achieves teaching results,especially in attitude toward empathic communication,confidence and empathic expression.