@2024 Afarand., IRAN

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ISSN: 2383-2150    Journal of Education and Community Health 2019;6(2):71-77

Background
Effective communication between primary healthcare workers and people is a critical skill for providing appropriate healthcare. ... [1].
Previous Studies
... [2-10]. According to studies, health professionals have problems with communication skills [11]. Simmons et al showed that 70% of medical errors were due to patient-physician communication problems [12]. Rezae et al. research also showed that 47.5% of physicians had poor communicative skills, 35% moderate and only 17.5% had good communicative skills [13]. There is also a significant percentage of patients' complaints about health care staff and inappropriate use of treatment instructions due to communication problems [14]. In addition, previous studies have shown that communication problems exist between 94-84% of patients and medical staff [15]. It has been proven today that effective communication among health workers reduces anxiety, results in better acceptance and follow-up of treatment and medication orders and reduces health costs, increases awareness, self-care, and patient satisfaction [10, 16, 17]. ... [18-20]. Improving communication skills and human relationships as well as self-efficacy in health care settings are important [4, 21]. Communication skills experts believe that these skills are largely acquired and learnable [11]. … [22]. Previous research has shown that communication skills training leads to improved self-efficacy [23, 24].
Aim(s)
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of educational intervention on communication skills and self-efficacy of primary healthcare workers (Behvarz).
Research type
This research is a quasi-experimental study.
Research society, place and time
The study population included primary healthcare workers (n=110) of health centers in Saveh and Zarandieh city in 2018.
Sampling method and number
Sample size was calculated 44 subjects for each group using the sample size formula for interventional studies and according to previous studies [25] with 95% confidence level, 80% test power and 6 effect size. Due to the probability of falling in the experimental group, the number of the samples increased to 60 and in the control group all 45 health workers in Zarandieh city were included in the study, of whom one subject withdrew and was excluded. One person leaving the study Inclusion criterion was the lack of effective physical and psychological problem for communication and the exclusion criteria were no informed consent to participate and being absent in two consecutive sessions of educational classes.
Used devices&materials
Data collection tool included a questionnaire including background information, self-efficacy questionnaire and communication skills assessment checklist [13, 15]. A study by Ghaffarifar et al. using Cronbach's alpha coefficient showed a reliability of 0.78 for this scale [26]. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's alpha test on 20 health workers who were similar in demographic characteristics to the target population. Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency for self-efficacy and communication skills questionnaires was 0.81 and 0.79, respectively. Appropriate educational content was designed according to the results of the pre-test study and was held in four 90-min training sessions for the experimental group. The control group received no training. Training methods included lecturing to raise awareness, powerpoint presentation to raise awareness and its consolidation, film presentation along with role-playing to improve self-efficacy and training proper communication skills, question and answer to stabilize what is learned, group discussion to improve self-efficacy and communication skills, providing educational handbooks and sending short messages contained key points of effective communication to stabilize what was learned in their free time. Two months after the intervention, the same questionnaire was completed by the participants in the experimental and control groups to assess the impact of the educational intervention The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 19 software using Chi-square, independent T and paired T-tests.
Findings by Text
The mean age of health workers was 39.60 ± 9.22 years, and the age of health workers in the experimental and control groups was 39.70 ± 8.81 and 39.46 ± 9.88, respectively. The experimental and control groups were homogenized in terms of qualitative (gender, marital status, education level and work experience) and quantitative (age) demographic variables and there was no significant difference between two groups (p>0.05; Table 1).The mean scores of self-efficacy and communication skills domains were not significantly different between the experimental and control groups before the intervention, except for the paying attention to the clients’ view, however, after the intervention, there was a significant difference between two groups in all domains of communication skills and self-efficacy. In addition, in the intra-group study, the mean scores of self-efficacy and all domains of communication skills increased significantly in the experimental group after the educational intervention, whereas in the control group, the mean score of data collection skill in the post-test significantly decreased and the communication skills at the beginning of the session increased significantly and no significant change was observed in other domains of communication skills and self-efficacy (Table 2).
Main comparison to the similar studies
... [27-29]. In line with our findings, in Nørgaard et al. study, after communication skills training, self-efficacy of health care workers increased significantly with regard to patients [27]. A review study by Berkhof et al. showed that training communication skills to medical staff is effective in increasing patient satisfaction and increasing physicians' self-confidence and self-efficacy [30]. In another relevant study, Ghofranipour et al. demonstrated that designing successful educational interventions to establish effective communication between medical staff and clients requires focus on enhancing staff self-efficacy [17]. Ghaffarifar et al. showed that there is a positive and significant correlation between communication skills with increasing self-efficacy and with increasing these skills, self-efficacy of physicians and nurses increases [16]. Contrary to our finding in the study of Ahmadi et al., there was no significant relationship between communication skills and self-efficacy [23], which can be due to the differences in the target population in two studies; as our study was done on employed primary healthcare workers, whereas they studied female students. ... [31-33].
Suggestions
It is suggested that similar studies be conducted in other health provider groups to improve the quality of health services provided by the community by improving communication skills and improving their communication skills.
Limitations
Of limitations of the present study are the time limits and the time-consuming process of completing the communication skills checklist due to the distribution of covered health centers in two cities.
Conclusions
Educational intervention is effective on the improvement of communication skills and self-efficacy of primary healthcare workers.
Acknowledgments
This research is extracted from a master thesis in health education of the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Ethical Permissions
The present study was approved by the Vice chancellor for research (No. 397183) and the Ethics Committee of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Approval Code: IR.MUI.REC.1397.3.183).
Funding Sources
This study was carried out with the financial support of the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

TABLES and CHARTS

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