Facing negative emotions : Evaluating the effects of training in affirmative communication for contact nurses in cancer care

• Background: In cancer care, contact nurses daily meet people who deal with strong,aversive emotions in relation to that they have or may have cancer where the risk ofdying is constantly present. This places demands on the ability of contact nurses tomaster difficult conversations with strong emotional expressions. One communicationmethod known for its regulating effects on emotions is affirmative communication, socalled validation. The overall aim of the current study was to evaluate effects of atraining in validating communication for contact nurses in cancer care, aimed tostrengthen their ability to work in a person-centered way.Methods: This study had a within-group design with pre-, post- and follow-up mea-surements (2 months). Specifically, the study aimed to evaluate whether the vali-dation training coincided with an increase in validation and a decrease in invalidation.Contact nurses from six regions (n ¼ 17) with a generally long work experience as anurse participated in a digital validation training for six weeks (three training sessionsplus three pre-recorded theoretical lectures). Communicative behaviors wereassessed through video-recordings of interactions between the nurses and fictitiouspatients. The videos were encoded by independent coders and analyzed withdependent MANOVA.Results: The contact nurses showed a significant increase in validation and a signif-icant decrease in invalidation after the training. These effects remained at the 2-month follow-up.Conclusions: Experienced healthcare professionals’ affirmative communication skillscan be improved after a brief training in validation.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Cancer och onkologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Cancer and Oncology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Nursing Science

Omvårdnad

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)