JCPSLP Vol 18 no 2 July 2016

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

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JCPSLP Volume 18, Number 2 2016

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology