Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation Stepwise Education Program: A quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND

A nurse, as the main subject of decision-making in clinical settings, experiences various situations that require communication with a range of health care providers. The communication process is important to the process of recognizing problems and choosing one among the available alternatives after reflection, which requires communication skills based on critical thinking. Communication competence is one of the basic competencies of nurses, and it is also important for providing qualitative healthcare service.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate how Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation Stepwise Education Program (SBAR SEP) developed on the basis of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy affects nursing students on their communication competence and critical thinking.

DESIGN

Non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design.

SETTINGS

A university in South Korea.

PARTICIPANTS

A total of 96 nursing college students (48 in the experimental group and 48 in the control group).

METHOD

The subjects were allocated using convenience sampling to one of the two groups: SBAR SEP or control. Subjects in SBAR SEP group received a lecture-style training of SBAR a week prior to clinical practicum and performed role-play during the two-week clinical practicum. The duration of the SBAR SEP role-play intervention was 2 weeks, twice a week, for 120 min each session. A control group performed a regular case presentation in the clinical practicum. Data were collected from August to October 2019. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, χ test, independent t-test, and ANCOVA using SPSS 25.0.

RESULTS

A significant increase was observed in the scores of communication competence (p < .001) and critical thinking (p < .001) in the experimental group compared with the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

The SBAR SEP for nursing students is an effective educational method that improves communication competence and critical thinking under similar circumstances at the clinical site.