In delivering of the essential health services and solidification of the health system are the main roles of the Nurses (1). Communication skills are an important element in nursing care and nursing education. Nurses have paid a lot of consideration to communication and interaction in nursing since 19th century at the time of Florence Nightingale (2). Appropriate communication is one of the patient's critical needs and the basis for nursing care (3) and again effective communication is the most important factor in maintaining the quality of nursing care (4). It performs the most important role between the nurses and clients (5).
Ineffective communication is usually a potential barrier to providing services in caring settings (6). The desirable outcome of a verbal interaction process is effective communication, where the receiver understands the sender’s message as it was intended (7).
The nature of the interpersonal relationships between nurses and patients, as well as its effect on patient care, is critical in health care service delivery, to ensure that the patients’ expectations are met, or exceeded (8). Healthy communication between providers and patients may predispose patients to release relevant information and to obey to prescribed treatment (9). In health care setting, effective communication assures the healthier psychological position by managing the disease, controlling the pain, recalling the history of the disease and improving the satisfaction of the clients (10). A health professional must therefore, continuously try to advance his/her communication skills as ineffective message can be a challenging and lead to confusion. So, to tackle those problems nurses are confronted daily with excessive duties due to high patient numbers and the nature of the health care environment (11). Thus, might lead to the communication abortive during care giving.
From Canada, patients were dissatisfied due to Nurses to patients ineffective Communication (12).
Care receivers with communication challenges were a more likely to manifest medical or clinical complications related to other receivers (13).
The communication problems among general population were 5-10%, whereas over 15% in Hospital admissions (14, 15). In a different studies, the prevalence of the Nurse to patient communication skill was described that in Iran good communication skills 14.3% (16), Tabriz 94.7 % (17), Greece 41.3 % (18), Korea 75 % (19) and Ethiopia 34.5 % (20). Accordingly, poor quality of care is prevalent due to such ineffective communication skills. So, in United kingdom researchers tried to improve communication skills with interprofessional team learning to maintain patient safety (21).
Several factors that influence communication skills between Nurse and patients have been examined, such as working experience, environmental barriers, gender differences, work crowdedness, work load, insufficient time and utilizing EBP (3, 22-26).
A systematic review explained that the nurses communication skills were negatively influenced with their excessive work during activities (27).
A cross-sectional study from Iran explained that disorganized environment was significantly associated with communication skills (12).
Regardless of strong emphasis on training and improving the caregiver’s communication skills, there are still noticeable lacks and therefore effective communication is restricted by a number of organized factors (2).
To enhance health care and decrease patients’ dissatisfaction, the factors that affect communication between nurses and patients must be recognized and taken into account; also, response to all communication needs of patients should be provided (28). Therefore, this study was aim to assesses the associated factors with the Nurse to patient communication skill at Amhara Region Referral Hospital, Ethiopia, 2019.