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JCPSLP
Volume 18, Number 2 2016
Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology
evaluate the training. Ethics approval was obtained from the
relevant hospital and university committees prior to any
data collection.
Participant recruitment
As this was a pilot study, all registered nurses working on
the acute neurosurgical and stroke wards in a tertiary
hospital in Melbourne were invited to participate. To
increase the likelihood of obtaining complete data sets,
casual employees were excluded from participating. The
first author attended six nursing handover meetings and
sent information about the study via email. Nurses who
were interested in the study completed a participant
information and consent form that was available on the
ward. Information about the nurses who participated in this
study is provided in the Results section.
Data collection
Basic demographic information about the nurses was
collected. This included years worked as a registered nurse,
years worked with patients with aphasia, and whether or
not they had received any previous education or training in
communicating with patients with aphasia. The nurses’
knowledge and confidence in communicating with patients
with aphasia was assessed before and after the training in a
number of different ways (see below).
Knowledge of aphasia
Three measures were used to assess each nurse’s
knowledge of aphasia. The first and second measures
assessed the nurses’ perception of their understanding of
aphasia and their knowledge of communication strategies
respectively on 4-point ordinal scales. The third measure
assessed each nurse’s knowledge of communication
strategies by asking the nurse to list communication
strategies that would (a) enable respectful communication
with a patient with aphasia; (b) facilitate the patient’s
understanding; (c) facilitate the patient’s ability to express a
message; and (d) check understanding of the message.
Confidence communicating with patients
with aphasia
The nurses’ confidence communicating with patients with
aphasia and their confidence repairing communication
breakdown was measured on separate 4-point ordinal
scales from “not confident” to “fully confident”. All the
measures of nurse knowledge and confidence were
conducted via SurveyMonkey
TM
, and are provided in the
Appendix.
Feasibility
Quantitative and qualitative data were collected in the post
training questionnaire to explore the feasibility of online
training. Data on the number of nurses who enrolled in and
participated in the online training was collected. Nurses
were asked to provide any feedback or recommendations
regarding the future development of the online training in an
open comments section.
Materials
The
Communicating with patients with Aphasia online
training program
was developed specifically for this
research. The online training program consisted of
background information on the incidence of aphasia post
stroke and a description of the potential implications of
aphasia on the patients’ ability to communicate and
participate in their health care in hospital. The online module
also provided a description of different ways of supporting
may be an important start because it has the potential to
increase staff awareness of communication breakdowns
(Simmons-Mackie, 2014) and awareness that patients may
have communication impairment(s). It may also result in a
willingness to try different kinds of communication supports
to facilitate more effective communication and appropriate
referrals to speech-language pathologists.
“Communicating with patients with aphasia” online training program
Online learning may be an effective way to increase
health care providers’ awareness of about aphasia, the
impact of aphasia on communication, and how strategies
can facilitate more effective communication. Online learning
provides staff with the opportunity to access education
at any time of the day or night and any time during the
week, it is well suited to health care staff who work different
shifts and on weekends (Purkis & Gabb, 2013). It also
means that staff can access the same education several
times if required. Although there are some excellent online
resources available about aphasia, such as the Aphasia
Stimulations (Aphasia Corner & Hinckley, n.d.) and Better
Conversations with Aphasia (Beeke et al., 2013), there are
no generic introductory online training programs available to
raise the awareness of health care providers about aphasia.
Therefore this study had two main aims. The first was
to determine if an online training program increased the
awareness of nurses about aphasia and the strategies
that may support communication with patients with
aphasia. The second aim was to investigate the feasibility
of providing online training about aphasia to health care
providers in a health care setting.
Method
Design
A mixed method design was used to investigate (a) the
effect of online training on nurses’ knowledge of aphasia
and communication strategies, and their confidence
communicating with patients with aphasia, and (b) the
feasibility of delivering this kind of training online. The effect
of the online training on perceived confidence
communicating with patients with aphasia was investigated
by administering a survey before and after the training. The
effect of online training on knowledge of communication
strategies was investigated by administering a survey
before and after training, and by asking nurses to identify
appropriate strategies that they could use to communicate
with a patient before and after training. The feasibility of
online training was investigated by asking participants to