Does Caring for Trauma Patients Admitted to Emergency Departments Need Advanced Communication Skills? A Quasi-Experimental Study of Nurses' Communication Audit

Background: Communication increases awareness of patient problems, productivity and job satisfaction, improving decision-making in patient discharge and transfer, and reducing hospital stay duration, medical costs, and nurses’ stress and burnout. Objectives: This study aimed to audit the communication of nurses with trauma patients in the emergency department. Methods: This quasi‑experimental study was conducted at the Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences in 2018. The data collection tool was a valid and reliable checklist for nurses' communication skills with trauma patients with 3 subscales and 31 items. Before the intervention, 35 nurses who were randomly selected were evaluated based on the communication checklist, and then the collected data was analyzed. Based on the results and the assessment of weaknesses, the necessary training was provided to the nurses. After the intervention, the participants' communication skills were analyzed using the same checklist and the results were compared. Descriptive statistics and parametric tests such as paired T-test were used to analyze the data. Results: The means age of participants was 39.5±9.3 years, and the majority of them were males.The mean scores of communication status before and after intervention were (10.00±3.29) and (26.26±2.30), respectively, among the 35 participating nurses. There was a significant difference between pre-and post-intervention (p <0/001) in terms of total communication skills scores, indicating the effectiveness of the intervention. Conclusion: The audit of nurses' communications with patients in the emergency department as well as training based on the improvement of weaknesses may be effective in improving nurses’ communication skills, and this may promote the level of communication skills, behavioral changes, and positive effects on the clinical situation of trauma patients.