Attempts to assess communicative competence among hospital nurses: lessons learned from a pilot study

The advent of the philosophy of supported conversation has highlighted the crucial role that the communication partner plays in a conversation and has encouraged speech and language therapists to train people to be able to communicate more effectively with people with aphasia (Kagan 1998). Few studies have looked at training nurses to be able to communicate with people with specific communication difficulties (Chant, Jenkinson, Randle, and Russell 2002) and there are few assessments available to evaluate improvement in competence following training. Kagan (Kagan, Black, Duchan, Simmons-Mackie and Square 2001) has developed rating scales which measure change in the communication partner’s skills and the level of participation of the person with aphasia. Conversation analysis has also been used to evaluate changes in communicative behaviours. Both approaches use video to capture the interaction in order to perform an analysis at a later date. Conversation analysis is very time-consuming and less relevant in a clinical situation and the use of video is not always appropriate or feasible. Setting up training for nurses is difficult owing to shift patterns and providing cover on the wards