Effect of Reminiscence Training on Professional Communication Skills in Pediatric Nursing Staff

The main way to improve the quality of care, especially for children, is to improve nursing communication skills.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of reminiscence training on professional relationship communication skills in pediatric nursing staff.

This study was a quasi-experimental design that consisted of all babies and infants’ nursing staff working in an educational hospital of Bushehr City, Iran, in 2019. A total of 84 nurses (41 cases were obtained for the experimental group and 43 cases for the control group) took part in the study. The samples were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. In this study, the questionnaires of nurses’ professional communication skills and nurses’ communication skills with hospitalized infant mothers were used. The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were confirmed. First, the pre-test was taken from the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received 8 hours reminiscence training session. Post-test was taken from both groups immediately and one month after the intervention. To analyze data, descriptive indices, the Chi-square test, independent t-test, and repeated measures ANOVA were used.

Comparison of demographic data in two groups showed no significant difference between them in terms of scores of both instruments before the intervention. The independent t-test showed that the mean scores of communication with mothers and communication with colleagues one month after the intervention were significantly different (P=0.001) between the experimental and control groups. The results of repeated measures ANOVA showed that the interaction effect between group and time was statistically significant, and the trend of mean scores changes in nursing staff professional relationships with colleagues (P=0.03) and mothers (P=0.001) during the study period (before, immediately after, one month after intervention) were different between the experimental and control groups.

Training based on reminiscence effectively improves nurses’ professional communication. So we suggest that this training be included in nurses’ educational programs.