Active listening: A tool to improve continuing nursing education among nursing students of the University of Calabar, Nigeria

3^rd World Congress on Nursing Education, Practice & Research

May 16-17, 2018 | Montreal, Canada

Mary A Mgbekem

University of Calabar, Nigeria

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Listening is an essential component of effective communication that requires attention and practice to analyze and organize sounds into recognizable patterns, interpret the patterns and infer meaning to messages communicated. Attentive listening is reported to result in creative reasoning and ideas clarification that assists learners to effectively process information and use their knowledge to better understand concepts and develop new ideas that meet expectations in training. This descriptive study was designed to explore nursing students� perception of active listening as a tool for improved continuing nursing education. Poor academic performances among nursing students gave rise to this study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select two hundred and seventy participants from levels 200, 300, 400 and 500 hundred respectively. Data were collected using adopted Active Listening Attitude Scale (ALAS) consisting of two subscales - "Listening Attitude" and "Listening Skill" questionnaire administered before training, two weeks after and one month after training. Data were analyzed using measurement of variance from each subscale. The participants were grouped into three percentile values of: low-score (20-44%), medium-score (45-64%) and high-score groups (65% and above). Changes noticed were examined accordingly. Findings revealed that both the Listening Attitude and Listening Skill subscales increased significantly after training. Analysis of the percentiles showed that the percentage of the low-score group decreased while the high-score group increased in both subscales, from two weeks to one month after training. These changes indicate that continuing nursing education positively improves active listening and academic performance.

Biography :

Mary A Mgbekem has completed her PhD in Human Nutrition from University of Calabar and MSN from Walden University, College of Health Sciences, School of Nursing. She is the current Head of Department, Department of Nursing Science, University of Calabar, a second-generation university in the South-South Geo-Political Zone of Nigeria. She has published more than 30 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an Editorial Board Member of repute. She is an Examiner and Script Marker for the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, final qualifying professional examination Senator in her home University.
Email:achimgbekem@yahoo.com