Interpersonal skills mediate the relationship between communicative and clinical competencies among nursing students:...

The development of clinical competency reduces nursing students' stress and turnover intention and improves their clinical practice satisfaction and academic performance. Still, many nursing supervisors feel that new graduate nurses have inadequate communicative and clinical competencies, and no prior study has analyzed the mediating effect of interpersonal skills in the relationship between these two variables.

To examine the factors that affect nursing students' clinical competency, including the mediating effect of interpersonal skills, and to identify/determine interventions that promote it and improve students' clinical performance.

This study employed a cross-sectional, descriptive correlational design.

Four departments of nursing in Jeollabuk-do, South Korea.

Participants (N = 222; mean age = 22.7 years; 75.2% women) were students enrolled in the third and fourth year of nursing.

From February 5-28, 2018, we collected data through self-reported questionnaires; these asked about participants' demographic characteristics and measured their communicative competency, interpersonal skills, and clinical competency. The relationships among the variables were identified using Pearson's correlation coefficient. We also used the Sobel test and a three-step multiple regression analysis to verify the mediating effects of interpersonal skills.

Students who were female, in their fourth year, satisfied with their major, and satisfied with their clinical practice had higher clinical competency scores than their counterparts. Interpersonal skills completely mediated the effects of communicative competency on clinical competency (explanatory power = 53.8%).

The results suggest the need for a program that improves nursing students' social relationship skills and diminishes their anxiety. In particular, students in the third and fourth years need a continuous/intensified curriculum that fosters their communicative competencies, such as listening to patients' needs and establishing effective interpersonal relationships with peers/superiors. Longitudinal studies are warranted to identify differences in communicative/clinical competencies among nursing students in different academic years.