Abstract:
Background: Nursing undergraduates frequently communicate with patients during their
clinical training. Communication may act as a barrier to reach the desired quality of their
learning. Patient-related and student-related communication barriers pertaining to nursing
undergraduates have to be identified and addressed for successful clinical learning.
Objective: To describe the perceived barriers for nursing undergraduates in two state
universities to communicate with patients during their clinical learning
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using a convenient sample of 120
nursing undergraduates from 2nd, 3rd and 4th years at University of Sri Jayewardenepura and
Eastern University of Sri Lanka. A previously validated self-administered questionnaire was
adopted and pre-tested for this study. It contained nurse-related, patient-related and nursing
students related barrriers for comunication. Data were analyzed using General Linear Model in
SPSS version 23. Patient-related and student-related communication barriers were categorized
as low, moderate and severe according to percentiles.
Results: A majority of participants were females (77.5%). Patient-related and nursing student related barriers were perceived as moderate barriers by a majority of nursing students 72.5%
and 66.6% respectively. Patient-related barriers had the highest overall mean (±SD) score
(3.12 ±0.64) compared to nursing student-related barriers (3.00 ±0.67). The highest mean
(±SD) scores were found for ‘serious disease conditions of patients’ (3.75 ±1.03) and
‘language differences’ (3.34 ±1.36) in the categories of patient-related and nursing student related barriers respectively. Three out of 11 (27.27%) patient-related communication barriers
and five out of 19 (26.32%) nursing student-related communication barriers were significantly
associated with students’ gender, academic year and their respective university.
Conclusions: Nursing students perceived both patient and student-related barriers to
communicate moderately. Patient-related barriers were the highest. Hospital authority has to
aware the patients regarding the importance of communication with nursing students. Nursing
students should be trained on effective communication, interpersonal and language skills
during their orientation and before attending clinical training.
