The Effect of the Talking Circle for Pediatric Nursing Students (TC4PN) Activity on Therapeutic Communication Skills

Nursing students communicate with patients during clinical practice to assess their needs and environmental factors affecting their health. However, nursing students often find therapeutic communication to be one of the most stressful tasks. In particular, studies report that nursing students face difficulties in communicating to care for pediatric patients. Communication is situational and contextual and can be influenced by factors such as patient characteristics.

Therapeutic communication is an intentional interaction aimed at improving the emotional and physical well-being of the patient. This communication is associated with the success of professions that focus on supporting people. Nursing is a profession that spends most of its professional life providing patient care. Effective therapeutic communication is essential for optimal nursing practice regardless of employment setting. Therapeutic communication aims to create quality health care based on awareness, empathy and trust between the nurse and the patient. Research shows that effective communication between patients and nurses increases patient satisfaction and quality of care and reduces the length of hospital stay. It is reported that inadequate or negative communication poses health risks for the patient.

Healthcare professionals report that communicating with hospitalized children is challenging. In this context, it is important to teach students how to communicate effectively with children and family members in the Child Health and Diseases Nursing Course, which teaches care and communication to children. Current literature emphasizes that the curriculum should be expanded with practices that will improve the effective communication skills of nursing students.

Although it is stated that therapeutic communication is necessary for effective child-centered care in all healthcare settings, the training provided to nurses on encouraging and strengthening nurse-child communication is unfortunately inadequate. Nursing education aims to train nurses with strong communication skills.Therefore, in nursing education, nursing students need to discover strategies that will enable them to understand therapeutic communication in depth and acquire skills that will enable them to communicate effectively with patients after graduation.

In this regard, the aim of this research is; To examine the effects of Talking Circle activities based on JOHN LOWE's self-confidence theory on the therapeutic communication skills of pediatric nursing students.