Development of soft skills during the training process. Cross-sectional study in nursing students

Abstract

Introduction: The effectiveness of nursing care offered today is decreasing markedly, and the quality of time spent with patients, listening to them and explaining issues related to their conditions, is gradually reducing.

Objectives: to investigate how nursing students understand the concept of soft skills and obtain their opinion on the need for training in these skills to promote effective nursing care.

Method: A sample of 258 second semester students was selected at a public institution in the coastal region of Ecuador. The sample was calculated using the free access digital calculator provided by QuestionPro, a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 5% was established, which resulted in the simple random selection of 156 students.

Results: Most of the students in the second semester (first year) of training were female (71.15%), whose age varied between 18 to 20 years (67.31%). The questions with the greatest domain were: Do you think you have the ability to work as a team? And have you ever been taught about teamwork? Since students feel relatively confident in their ability to collaborate with other professionals and in some way recognize having received training, and finally students perceive that they have not been evaluated by their teacher in their critical thinking/problem solving skills, since these are fundamental competencies in any professional, which is why teachers may assume that students are developing these competencies without providing specific assessments.

Conclusions: The integration of the teaching and evaluation of soft skills is crucial to prepare future health professionals because it helps us face the challenges of the clinical and work environment.