An online communication skills education program for midwifery students: A quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Background: Communication and entrepreneurship skills, which have a very important place among the 21st century skills, are among the basic skills that a midwife should have.

Objective: This study was carried out to investigate the effect of the Communication Skills Education Program on the communication and entrepreneurship skills of the midwifery students.

Design: This study was designed a quasi-experimental study.

Settings: Online.

Participants: First grade Bachelor of Midwifery Science students (n = 117).

Methods: In this study, the Communication Skills Education Program was given to midwifery students. The Communication Skills Assessment Scale and University Students Entrepreneurship Scale were administered before the education program was implemented (pre-test), when the training program was completed (post-test), and six months after the education program was completed (post-test). Classified data were given in numbers and percentage distribution. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between the variables. In order to test the significance of the difference between pre-test, post-test and follow-test the repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed.

Results: The mean age of the participating students was 19.46 ± 1.74 (min. 18.0, max: 31.0) years. While 8.5 % of the students received training on communication previously, 7.7 % of the students received education on entrepreneurship previously. Statistically significant differences were determined between the scores the students obtained at the pre-test, post-test and follow-up test [F = 224.38, p = .00/F = 325.13, p = .00]. The Bonferroni test performed to find out from which tests the difference stemmed demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the mean scores obtained at all the tests. According to the analysis of the relationship between the mean scores the students obtained from the scales, there was a moderately significant positive correlation only between their pre-test mean scores.

Conclusions: In conclusion, we determined that the Communication Skills Education Program improved the students' communication and entrepreneurship skills.

Keywords: Communication; Entrepreneurship; Midwifery; Students.