Assessing barriers toeffective Nurse-patient communication in educational hospitals of Sabzevar

Introduction: Therapists and especially nurses -who spend lots of their time with patients, frequently need to communicate with them. However, many nurses don’t use these skills in clinical practice and in communication with patients because of some barriers. Recognition of the barriers toeffective nurse-patient communication from their point of view could facilitate the actions need to be taken in order toremoving them. This study aimed to evaluate barriers to effective nurse-patient’s communication from nurses and patients’ viewpoints.
Materials and methods: This is a descriptive analytic studyand total participants of 80 nurses and 80 patients participated from two educational hospitals of Sabzevar city in 2011. Study participants were selected by convenience sampling. Data were collected through a researcher made questionnaire. Total of 23 benchmarks in three main parts, with general titles of: barriers related to nurses, patients and environment were determined.
Result: Barriers to communication related to nurses such as "overload ofnursing works in wards", "lesser number of nurses than patients", "correct duties not to be done by other hospital staff", "being uninterested in learning communication skills", "lack of nursing information and skills about effective nursing – patient communication", were the main barriers to effective communication. Important barriers to communication related to patientswere such as "Anxiety", "physically concerns", "interventions" and the most important barriers related to environment were "a crowded environment" and "unsanitary patient’sroom ".
Conclusion: This study showed that barriers to effective nurse-patientcommunication include barriers to nurses, patients and environment. Thus, health managers
should put their attempts on eliminating or modifying the most important barriersannounced inthese three fields (nurses, patients and environment).