Appraising the Communication Skills of Nursing Students in Clinical Settings

Background: Effective communication is a core competency for nursing students, essential for establishing therapeutic relationships, ensuring patient safety, and delivering high-quality, person-centered care. Despite its importance, nursing students often enter clinical settings with underdeveloped communication skills, influenced by anxiety, lack of confidence, and limited practical exposure. Aim: This study aimed to assess the communication skills of nursing students during patient interactions in clinical settings, examine their self-perceived clinical competence, and determine associations between communication skills and selected demographic variables. Methods: A descriptive and correlational study was conducted among 60 final-year nursing students at a selected nursing college in Kanyakumari District. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire, including socio-demographic variables and the Persian version of the Communication Skills Scale (Sharif Nia et al., 2022). Communication skills were categorized as poor, moderate, good, or excellent. Descriptive statistics summarized demographic and communication data, while t-tests, ANOVA, and Chi-square tests assessed associations between communication scores and demographic variables, with significance set at p < 0.05. Results: Most participants were aged 20–22 years (90%) and female (60%). The majority reported strong motivation for nursing (96.7%) and perceived themselves as adequately competent (75%). Communication skills were predominantly good (51.7%) to excellent (25%), with a mean score of 40.08 (SD = 4.85). Only a small proportion exhibited moderate (21.7%) or poor (1.6%) skills. No significant associations were found between communication scores and demographic variables (p > 0.05), suggesting that factors beyond age, gender, course type, residence, or year of study influence communication competence. Conclusion: Nursing students generally demonstrate satisfactory to excellent communication skills and confidence in clinical practice. However, a subset requires targeted support to enhance competence. Integrating structured communication training, mentorship, and emotional intelligence development in nursing curricula can improve professional engagement, patient-centered care, and overall clinical performance.