Abstract:

Communication is a key element in the nurse – patient relationship, it's impossible to make a good assessment, show to the patient our intention to help and the type of care that we are going to offer without communication skills.

An interpersonal relationship where the professional play a role of help, listening and dialogue, while the center of attention must be the patient, his narrative, what he says and how he says it, and his experience regarding the disease.

Several studies show that effective communication improves the patient's understanding of their health problems. This favors compliance with treatment and the effectiveness of health education. Therefore, communication is a fundamental element in the professional training of nurses. Students often have difficulty applying theoretical communication models to the reality of clinical practice, therefore simulation models emerge as an essential element to overcome this gap. During the simulation training it is necessary for students to be aware of the communication errors they make and of the needs that patients share in a clinical interaction. For this reason, the self-evaluation of their own performance allows them to develop generic competences, especially reflective critical thinking and error is incorporated as a learning model.

The “CICAA” scale has been developed to assess the clinical relationship during the care process, can be used as a training tool and has shown adequate psychometric properties (Pérez, Rodríguez, & Venegas, 2018).

Objectives:
To evaluate the effectiveness of self-assessment with the CICAA scale as a training complement to regular teaching in improving the communication skills of nursing students.

Methods:
Experimental trial where 82 nursing students were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. Both received the same communication training except for the use of CICAA, which was only used by the experimental groups. Students were assessment through clinical interview simulations. The CICCA scale is based on an external evaluation by observing the interaction. It is of the rubric type, with an evaluative scale of Likert-type responses of 3 degrees (scored from 0 to 2; where 0: very little or scarcely, 1: acceptably and 2: almost totally or totally) and with 29 items, which follows a theoretical model of interview centered on the patient by tasks (connecting with the patient, identifying and understanding the patient's health problems, agreeing with the patient about the problem (s), decisions and actions, and helping the patient understand , choose and act). The evaluation and analysis were masked. Bivariate and inferential statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS statistical program.

Results:
Means score posttest were increased compared to pretest in both groups for both observers (observer 1: control group 14,18 – DT: 6,236 vs 35,59 - DT: 5,164; experimental group 15,45 - DT: 5,861 vs 37,60 - DT: 7,117; observer 2: control group 15,49 - DT: 6,112 vs 34,95 - DT: 4,448, experimental group 17,05 - DT: 5,738 vs 38,53 - DT: 6,664). Although scores were higher in the experimental groups the differences were not significant.

Conclusion:
Communication training was effective, and self-assessment with the CICAA questionnaire although it improved the results, these were not significantly more effective in improving the communication skills of nursing students than training with regular free self-assessment.

Keywords:

Clinical Interview, Communication Skills, Health Communication, Interpersonal Relations, Nursing, Randomized Controlled Trial, Simulation Training, Students.