Effects of staff-patient relations training on employees and their feelings about their work.

This article describes a study in which 16 health care workers participated in a two-hour staff-patient relations training session that was held once weekly for three weeks. Training included discussions of empathy, anger, stress management, effective communication, managing irate or difficult patients and families empathetically, and the concept of "positive stroking." The participants were given a pretest and posttest of program content and they also completed a five-item Likert scale survey. The patients rated themselves as overall improved in five areas of self-evaluation. The scores were significantly improved in the posttest group. There was a high correlation between "before" and "after" scores.