Communication skills training enhances nurses' ability to respond with empathy to parents' emotions in a neonatal intensive care unit.

Aim: We quantitatively analysed the effect of a course in communication on the content of nurse-parent encounters and the ability of nurses to respond to the empathic needs of parents in a level III neonatal intensive care unit.

Methods: We evaluated 36 and 45 nurse-parent encounters audio recorded before and after 13 neonatal nurses attended a communication course. The number of empathic opportunities, the nurses' responses to these and the ways they involved parents in their infants' care were studied.