Soft Skills Training Strategy and Its Effect on Nurse Interns' Civil Behavior

Contents: Soft skills are socio-emotional skills, essential for personal development and workplace success. While civility is defined as having respect for others, and it is necessary to bring attention to the importance of soft skills and civility and discuss its impact on teaching, learning, and patient outcomes. Aim: This study aimed to assess the effect of soft skills training strategies on nurse interns' civil behavior. Methods: The study was conducted at Ain-Shams University Hospitals, where nurse interns have their training, namely; Ain-Shams University Hospital, El-Demerdash hospital, Pediatrics Hospital, and Cardiovascular Hospital using quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. The subjects of this study included all available nurse interns having their training in the settings mentioned above during the data collection period (the academic year 2017-2018). The study sample was 90 nurse interns, 35 males, and 55 females. The data were collected by using two tools, namely soft skills elements questionnaire and workplace civility index. Results: The study revealed a highly statistically significant improvement in nurse interns' total knowledge in the post and follow up phases p<0.01 as compared to the pre-intervention phase. Also, there was a highly statistically significant improvement in nurse interns' soft skills in the post and followed up phases p<0.01 as compared to the pre-intervention phase. In addition to a highly statistically significant improvement in nurse interns' civil behavior in the post and follows up phases p<0.01 as compared to the pre-intervention phase. Conclusion: Implementing a soft skills training strategy for nurse interns is effective to improve their civil behavior. Based on the study findings, it was recommended that soft skills training strategy should be applied in all nursing curricula. The faculty of nursing should be supplied with all the learning resources needed in the educational system to support the students’ soft skills development, and further studies should be developed to handle the barriers of implementation of soft skills training strategy in nursing education.