Nurses Communication Barriers in Healthcare Centers: Patients’ Perspectives

Abstract

While community health nurses in different healthcare settings, provide competent and qualified services, they have been confronted by numerous types of communication barriers that hindering their necessary functions. The nurse as a community servant should have fitting communication skills to maintain excellent care provision and overcoming the barriers that may hinder these targets. Thus, the current study aims to identify and describe patients’ perceptions about nurses' communication barriers in healthcare centers in KSA.  Cross-sectional, descriptive exploratory design is used in three health care centers in the rural governor of Afif in the Riyadh city, KSA. 300 patients were selected by a stratified proportionate random sampling technique in the three healthcare centers, and for each center, systemic random sampling approach was implemented. The Health Communication Feedback questionnaire (HCFQ) was used for data collection which was developed by Yorkshire Cancer Network in 2006 and modified by Fathi A et al., in 2015. The present research study found that patients in rural healthcare centers have accepted views regarding nurses’ communication behaviors in healthcare centers. While, they perceived some barriers in this communication, such as: 1- Barriers in the side of the patients which including; the disease process, language difficulties, physical and psychological complaints like pain, fever, anxiety, and graving. 2- Barriers in the side of the nurses which involving; limited communication skills and insufficient time. 3- Barriers regarding staff and health care center environment which containing; work crowdedness, noise and uncooperative routine system of management. The last type of barriers is 4-Barries in dealing with health messages which representing that nurses’ health messages may be not related to clients’ need and it may involve terminology which hinders their communication. On the other hand, the study participants provided some suggestions to overcome the previous barriers, for examples: increasing of patient-nurse cooperation, training of nurses on communications skills in health centers and considering that in nursing curricula, and decreasing nurses’ workload. Conclusion: Patient’s views are very effective indicators for healthcare professional work. Community health nurses in healthcare centers have some communication barriers which may negatively affect their performance. Moreover, patients illustrated some solutions which should be taken into considerations among stakeholders and nursing curricula planners in KSA. Recommendations: In-serve training programs about communication skills, culture, religious norms and role models should be taken by the nurses in simulated virtual environments or reality. The further major study needed in the light of the current study is, develop and implement nursing curricula included real scenarios about nurses-patient communication skills.