Language support improves oral communication skills of undergraduate nursing students : a 6-month follow-up survey

Background: With the widening of participation in higher education, it is essential in the discipline of nursing that students are able to communicate proficiently to deliver quality patient care. However, undergraduate students can experience significant difficulties with spoken communication critical to professional nursing, which places them 'at risk' of failure during the nursing course. Objectives: To examine the relationship between students' use of academic literacy support and oral communication skills. Design: Prospective, correlational survey design. Setting A large multi-campus university in Western Sydney, Australia. Participants: A total of 1699 assessment ratings of first and second year nursing students were completed at both baseline and at the 6-month follow-up in 2015. Methods: The CLIP index was embedded as an assessment requirement in four clinical skills-based units and assessed at the end of each semester in the first two years of the Bachelor of Nursing program. In this study, first and second year students were assessed in Semester 1 at baseline and also six months later in Semester 2. Results: From Semester 1 to Semester 2, the mean CLIP scores improved from 15.8 (SD: 3.7) to 17.2 (SD: 3.3) and all four components of the mean CLIP index improved. The smallest improvement was in the area of pronunciation while the lexical component had the greatest improvement. In addition, students who attended an academic literacy consultation or workshop for oral language support were over 1.5 times more likely to achieve an improvement in CLIP score (AOR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.26 to 1.98). Conclusion: The CLIP tool can be used to track and monitor students' oral language skills over the course of their study, and identify 'at risk' students requiring additional support through on-campus language support programs.