Long term follow-up on health care professionals’ self-efficacy after communication skills training

Abstract

Introduction: Good communication is commonly recognised to be a precondition for optimal health care and treatment.  Nevertheless, serious communication problems are still experienced by patients as well as by health care professionals and therefore an orthopaedic surgery department initiated a three-day communication skills training course for all staff members expecting an increase in patient-centeredness in communication and more respectful inter-collegial communi-
cation. The aim of this study is to report the long term effect of communication skills training course on health care professionals’ self-efficacy in communication with patients and colleagues.

Method: An intervention study assessing health care professionals’ self-efficacy before and eighteen months after having participated in the course using pre-course data as baseline for paired t-tests of means. Data were collected by means of questionnaires.

Results: Responses to the 18-months post-course questionnaire were received from 121 participants (93%) showing sustained significant increases in self-efficacy across professions for all questions regarding communication with both patients and colleagues.

Discussion: This long term assessment shows that communication skills training can produce significant and sustainable increases in the self-efficacy of health care professionals in communication with both patients and colleagues.