An Evaluation Instrument for Interviewing Skills in Psychiatry

Background: Instruments to assess nurses’ interviewing skills for in psychiatry are rare. In this study, we use such an instrument to identify and evaluate interviewing skills. Methods: We designed a 6-month training program with 12 courses. The first 10 courses included didactic lectures combined with role-playing exercises to teach interviewing skills. We used an evaluation instrument that emphasized the six main elements of interviewing, including opening statements, conversation starters, empathetic statements, statements of the concrete effects of the patient’s behavior, encouragement of the patient to discuss and identify conflict solutions that are mutually acceptable, and closing statements. In the last two courses, three examiners evaluated the nurses’ interviewing skills.Results: Four participants attended the training course two times, with an average score of 60.0. Two participants attended the course four, five or seven times, with average scores of 45.0, 52.5, and 72.5, respectively. One participant attended the course eight times and received a score of 82.5.Conclusion: This study found that the more times the nurses engaged in the training course, the higher score their score in the assessment of interviewing skills. Because of this dose-response relationship, we suggest that this instrument is valuable for evaluating communication skills in difficult situations in psychiatric wards.