Non-Verbal Communication Behaviors of Internationally Educated Nurses and Patient Care Research and Theory for Nursing Practice
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2012
Publication Title
Research and Theory for Nursing Practice
Volume
26
Issue
4
First page number:
290
Last page number:
308
Abstract
Background: Because of language barriers and cultural differences, internationally educated nurses (IENs) face documented communication challenges in health care delivery. Yet, it is unknown how and to what extent nonverbal behaviors affect patient care because of research gap in the existing nursing literature.
Methods: This is an exploratory study evaluating nonverbal communication behaviors of IENs interacting with standardized patients (SPs) in a controlled clinical setting through videotape analysis. Participants included 52 IENs from two community hospitals in the same hospital system in a southwestern metropolitan area in the United States. Twelve nonverbal behaviors were rated using a 4-point Likert scale with 4 indicating the best performance by the research team after watching videos of SP-IEN interactions. The global communication performance was also ranked in four areas: genuineness, spontaneity, appropriateness, and effectiveness. The relationships between these four areas and the nonverbal behaviors were explored. Finally, a qualitative analysis of two extreme cases was conducted and supplemented the quantitative findings.
Results: The IENs received average scores under 2 in 5 out of the 12 nonverbal behaviors. They were "hugging" (1.06), "lowering body position to patient's level" (1.07), "leaning forward" (1.26), "shaking hands" (1.64), and "therapeutic touch" (1.66). The top three scores were for "no distractive movement," "eye contact," and "smile" (3.80, 3.73, and 3.57, respectively). The average overall global impression score was 2.98. The average score for spontaneity was 2.80, which was significantly lower than the scores for genuineness (3.15), appropriateness (3.11), but comparable to the average score for effectiveness (2.85). Finally, therapeutic touch, interpersonal space, eye contact, smiling, and hugging were all significantly correlated with one or more of the global impression scores, with therapeutic touch showing moderate correlations with all of the scores as well as the overall global impression score.
Implications: The IENs' nonverbal behaviors in areas such as hugging, lowering body position to patient's level, leaning forward, shaking hands, and therapeutic touch have room for improvement. Targeted interventions focusing on norms and expectations of nonverbal behaviors in the U.S. health care setting are called for to improve quality of care.
Keywords
Body language; Communication in nursing; Internationally educated nurses; Nonverbal communication; Nurse and patient; Patient care; Transcultural nursing
Disciplines
Education | Interpersonal and Small Group Communication | Nursing
Language
English
Permissions
Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.
Repository Citation
Xu, Y.,
Staples, S.,
Shen, J. J.
(2012).
Non-Verbal Communication Behaviors of Internationally Educated Nurses and Patient Care Research and Theory for Nursing Practice.
Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, 26(4),
290-308.