Creative drama implementation to develop communication and empathy skills in Psychiatric Nursing education: Randomized Controlled Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND One of the important problems in psychiatric nursing education is that students may experience fear and anxiety while working with psychiatric patients due to their prejudices. These fears and anxieties cause negative situations such as difficulties in providing care to individuals with mental illness, difficulty in conducting psychiatric assessments and interviews, and inability to initiate therapeutic communication with patients. It is quite possible to claim that classical education methods are not sufficient to reduce anxiety and prejudices and strengthen communication and empathy in mental health and psychiatric nursing. Therefore, new education methods are needed in the field. that will increase communication and empathy skills. Studies show that dramatic education methods for health professionals can help eliminate such deficiencies. OBJECTIVE This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of a training program, which is designed with the creative drama method based on Travelbee's "human-to-human relationship" theory for use in teaching mental health and psychiatric nursing courses, in reducing students' anxiety and improving their empathy and communication skills. METHODS This study is a controlled experimental study with mixed method conducted in 26 nursing students. Socio-demographic data form, Empathic Skill Scale -B Form (ESS-B), Communication Skills Rating Scale (CSRS), State and Trait anxiety inventories (STAI I- STAI-II) were used for data collection; the scales were implemented to the experimental and control groups at the beginning of the training and 1 month after the end of the training. RESULTS There was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups with respect to the scale scores before the training. There was a significant difference both within the experimental group (143.8 ± 20.3-192.3 ± 14.5) and between the experimental and control groups (154.6 ± 28.1-192.3 ± 14.5) regarding the ESS-B score (p CONCLUSIONS It was determined that the training program significantly increased the ESS-B scores but had no effect on the CSRS and STAI I-STAI-II scales scores. The training program implemented increased the students’ knowledge and skill levels, and was found to be effective in increasing the students’ skills of emphatizing with the psychiatry patients and their relatives, initiating and maintaining communication, and reducing prejudices and anxiety. CLINICALTRIAL The Number of Clinical Trials (NCT), which indicates the registration number for randomized controlled trials, was received (Identifier: NCT05166941)