Improving Chinese nursing students' communication skills by utilizing video-stimulated recall and role-play case scenarios to introduce them to the SBAR technique Weiwen Wang ⁎, Zhan Liang, Alice Blazeck, Brian Greene University of Pittsburgh, School of Nursing, Pittsburgh, PA, USA summary article info Article history: Accepted 13 February 2015 Keywords: SBAR Nursing education Communication/inter-professional communication Video-stimulated recall Role-play case scenarios Purpose: Effective communication among healthcare workers is critically important for patient safety and quality care. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate outcomes of a workshop designed to teach Chinese nursing students to use the Situation–Background–Assessment–Recommendation (SBAR) communication tool and examine their attitudes toward utilizing SBAR as a communication tool. Method: A convenience sample of 18 master's degree nursing students at a Chinese university was introduced to SBAR through a workshop. The workshop combined the SBAR tool, video-stimulated recall and role-play case scenarios to illustrate potential positive and negative communication-related patient outcomes. Students completed a 12-item questionnaire before and after participating in the workshop. Four of the items examined the four elements of the SBAR tool (situation, background, assessment, recommendation, score range 0–20), and eight of the items evaluated students' self-perceived attitudes towards utilizing the SBAR tool in their clinical practice (score range 0–40). Results: Pre- and post-workshop scores on the four elements of the SBAR tool demonstrate significant improve- ment in knowledge of SBAR (14.0 ± 2.9 vs. 16.6 ± 2.2, respectively; p = 0.009). Pre- and post-workshop scores on the items testing students' self-perceived abilities also demonstrate significant improvement (26.9 ± 3.5 vs. 32.6 ± 4.5, respectively; p b 0.01) in using SBAR. Total scores increased significantly from 40.9 ± 5.0 to 49.2 ± 5.9 (p b 0.01). Moreover, 93.8% of the students agreed and strongly agreed that they would use SBAR during clinical practice. Conclusion: Participating in the SBAR workshop in combination with video-stimulated recall and role-play case scenarios significantly improved the Chinese nursing students' knowledge of SBAR and their self-perceived attitudes towards using SBAR tool. Future studies using a larger sample size and longer post-workshop follow- up are needed to confirm the long-term benefits of the workshop. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Effective communication among healthcare professionals is critically important for patient safety and quality care (Gausvik et al., 2015; Weaver et al., 2013). Communication is especially important for nurses, as they are the healthcare professionals who have the most direct care time with patients (Ascano-Martin, 2008). Being a frontline healthcare worker, nurses need to be adept at not only understanding the instruc- tions for care to be given to a patient, but also working as an intermedi- ate to convey information about the patient to other healthcare professionals, including other nurses, physicians, and members of other healthcare teams (Kameg, Mitchell, Clochesy, Howard, & Suresky, 2009). Opportunities to process, practice, and perfect commu- nication with patients and other healthcare providers using common language is a crucial component of the curriculum for all nursing stu- dents (Boyle & Kochinda, 2004). Therefore, it is crucial that nursing stu- dents have opportunities to learn and practice communication strategies to accurately understand medical instructions, effectively communicate with patients, and efficiently provide shift reports to other staff nurses. Moreover, it is also important for nursing students to learn how to communicate and report critical situations clearly and correctly, and in a standardized manner, to physicians and/or other healthcare providers (Velji et al., 2008). Literature review Medical errors most commonly occur after breakdowns in handover communications (Institute of Medicine, 2005). An analysis of evaluation notes conducted by the Joint Commission indicates that communication Nurse Education Today 35 (2015) 881–887 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Acute and Tertiary Care, University of Pittsburgh, School of Nursing, 336 Victoria Building, 3500 Victoria Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. Tel.: +1 412 624 7936; fax: +1 412 383 7227. E-mail address: weiwen@pitt.edu (W. Wang). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2015.02.010 0260-6917/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt