MICROCOUNSELLING: TRAINING IN SKILLS OF THERAPEUTIC COMMUNICATION WITH RN DIPLOMA-PROGRAM NURSING STUDENTS.
Contributors: Dalhousie University (Canada)
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 170
Subjects: Education, Educational Psychology.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: There were two purposes of this study. The first was to assess the applicability of microcounselling to nursing education. In particular, this study assessed the degree to which R.N. diploma-program nursing students acquired and retained six basic microskills of communication. The second purpose was, through appropriate design and analysis, redress many of the criticisms of earlier microcounselling research.

Fifty-three female RN students at the end of their second year of a two year six-month diploma program were randomly assigned to either an experimental-group which received microtraining, or a non-attention control-group. All subjects completed both the Carkhuff Indices of Communication and Discrimination as pretests. The experimental-group then had approximately 25 hrs. of microtraining in the following 6 microskills: Attending Behavior, Questioning, Minimal Encouragers, Paraphrasing, Reflection of Feeling and Summarizing.

Following training, each subject completed the Carkhuff Indices again, the Empathy Construct Rating Scale, and conducted a 10 - 15 minute audio-taped nursing interview in which she assumed the role of a helping nurse.

Multivariate analysis of covariance indicated a significant main effect at post-training suggesting that the experimental-group performed better than the control-group when all the measures were combined together. Specifically, the experimental-group were better than the control-group at communicating empathy as measured by the Carkhuff Empathy Scale. The experimental-group, in contrast to the control-group, evidenced significant gain in empathy from pretest to posttest. The experimental-group performed significantly better than the control-group (made more and appropriate statements) on Reflection of Feeling, Summarizing and Closed-Questions (asked less) as measured by the Ivey Taxonomy. As well, the experimental-group made more Good responses and less Therapeutic Errors than did the control-group as measured by the Therapist Error Checklist. At a 9 month follow-up, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups.

Support was offered for microcounseling with RN diploma-program nursing students, and for microcounselling in general. Further conclusions and recommendations were offered.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-01, Section: A, page: 0080.

Thesis (PH.D.)--DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY (CANADA), 1985.

School code: 0328.