Abstract

Background: self-efficacy is an important concept that can affect performance, results, and behavior. In a nutshell, self-efficacy improves nursing performance. Nurses need to communicate in particular with the members of the treatment team to perform job duties better. Several studies are available on the nurse's communication skills; however, communication skills of head nurses who have the closest contact have not been investigated yet. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the relationship between communication skills of head nurses and self-efficacy of nurses in the educational hospitals of Sanandaj. Materials and Methods: This Cross Sectional study was conducted on 51 head nurses who were selected through census method and 153 nurses who were selected through simple random sampling method in Sanandaj educational hospital wards of in 2015. Two instruments were used in this study, including Queendom Communication Skills inventory and Sherer's self-efficacy questionnaire. We used descriptive statistics, independent t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient to analyze the data by SPSS version 13. Results: The Mean±SD scores of communication skills in the studied head nurses were 112.39 ± 8.19. The Mean±SD scores of self-efficacy in the studied nurses were 64.59 ± 8.64. Communication skills, including the ability to receive and send messages, emotional control, listening, insight into the communication process were higher than the average value (average value=3) and communication skills combined with the certainty was less than the average value. There was a significant relationship between the mean scores of communication skills in the head nurses and the mean scores of self-efficacy in nurses (p<0.001) Conclusion: This study showed that there was a statistically significant relationship between communication skills of head nurses and self-efficacy of nurses. Therefore, the self-efficacy of nurses increased with the increasing communication skills of head nurses.