Title: Quality improvement project to enhance the knowledge and confidence of nursing students’ therapeutic engagement with patients in mental health care
Abstract:
Background/Introduction: Problem: The psychiatric mental nursing curriculum does not teach Therapeutic Communication (TC) techniques before students begin clinical practice; the didactic content and the clinical practice co-occur. Hence students need more confidence in using therapeutic communication techniques during patient engagement.
Specific Aims: To investigate whether an educational intervention on therapeutic communication techniques before clinical practice enhances the confidence of nursing students’ engagement with patients to improve the mental health nursing curriculum.
Methods/Project Description/Design: Before nursing students begin clinical engagement with patients with mental health during the Fall of 2022, Spring of 2023, and Summer of 2023:
- Teach therapeutic communication techniques: PowerPoint via WebEx-synchronous.
- Show and discuss a video depicting a role play of nurse use of therapeutic communication techniques in patient engagement in a mental health setting.
- Rate students' pre-confidence level on the 'My Confidence Rating Scale' on using TC techniques to engage with patients with mental illness.
- Administer quizzes to assess knowledge of therapeutic communication.
- Rate students' post-confidence level on the 'My Confidence Rating Scale' on using TC techniques to engage with patients with mental illness.
- Collect students' subjective feedback and identify significant themes in their experience using therapeutic techniques.
Results/Outcomes Discussion: As of May 2023, students enrolled in the undergraduate Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing Course in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 completed the didactic part of the curriculum. Their clinical practice will begin in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024, respectively. Pre- and post-lesson quiz results show improvement in knowledge skills. The comparison of pre-test and post-test on students' confidence and subjective feedback in applying therapeutic techniques will be analyzed after the clinical practice engagement.
Conclusion: Pre-knowledge of therapeutic communication techniques may positively affect nursing students' confidence in effective patient engagement in psychiatric clinical settings. Hence, an improvement of the nursing curriculum to allow the teaching of therapeutic communication techniques before clinical practice begins may be warranted. Future Research: The collection of data for this quality improvement project is still ongoing. The need for research on analyzing students’ confidence in patient engagement using the knowledge of therapeutic communication techniques may be necessary for other nursing courses.
