Nurses' interpersonal skills: a study of nurses' perceptions

Burnard, P. and Morrison, P. (1991) Nurses' interpersonal skills: a study of nurses' perceptions. Nurse Education Today, 11 (1). pp. 24-29.

Abstract

Six Category Intervention Analysis was used as the framework of a study which involved asking 117 trained nurses to rate their interpersonal skills along six dimensions. The findings suggested that the nurses viewed themselves as being more skilled in offering support, information and prescription in their dealings with patients and less skilled in being catalytic, cathartic and confronting in similar circumstances. The findings in this study were similar to those of previous studies in this field. The study has implications for the development of interpersonal skills training programmes for nurses.