Weekly Email Reminders Increase Nursing Students' Use of Empathic Communication: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Healthcare Communication
• Patient-Centered Care

Background:

• Empathic communication offers significant patient benefits.
• Many nurses lack or underutilize empathic communication skills.
• Improving these skills is crucial for quality patient care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the effectiveness of two interventions for enhancing empathic communication among nursing students.
• To identify low-cost, low-resource methods to improve nurse communication skills.

Main Methods:

• A randomized controlled trial was conducted with pretest, posttest, and 3-month follow-up assessments.
• Participants were allocated to receive weekly email reminders, a quick reference guide, both, or neither.
• Intervention groups focused on increasing empathic communication behaviors.

Main Results:

• All groups demonstrated significant improvements in empathic communication from pretest to posttest.
• The group receiving only email reminders showed a statistically significant increase compared to the control group.
• No significant changes in empathic communication were observed between the posttest and 3-month follow-up.

Conclusions:

• Weekly empathic communication email reminders are effective in increasing nursing students' use of these skills.
• This intervention surpasses traditional lectures and classroom activities in enhancing empathic communication.
• Email reminders offer a practical, scalable solution for nursing education.