Abstract
Purpose: To clarify the nursing skill characteristics required to initiate nurse-patient relationships based on the time series changes in verbal and nonverbal behaviors during the initial conversation with the patient.
Methods: A 10-min role-playing session of an initial conversation with the same simulated patient was conducted by six nurses and six nursing students, and the time series changes in verbal and nonverbal behaviors with accuracy of 10 ms were extracted using the annotation software ELAN. The results were comparatively investigated.
Results: Time series changes in speaking number and time, strength of claiming speech content, and number of physical movements showed a double-dip meta-complementarity in the nurses and a flat pattern in the nursing students. The simultaneous silence of the nurse complied with the patient’s silence, and the frequency of uttering meaningless words and unnecessary motion (filler) demonstrated a tendency to go along with the patient’s flow of ideas.
Conclusion: It was suggested that nurses obtain patients’ attention by co-varying intonations using multiple channels and that during in-between silences, nurses should return to the basic supporting relationship to physically synchronize with patients’ motion.
