Abstract:

INTRODUCTION: Communication skills and social intelligence levels of nurses are important in fulfilling the roles and responsibilities related to care; on the other hand, it is believed that being engaged in art will improve the communication skills and social intelligence. This research was carried out to examine the communication skills and social intelligence levels of nursing students in terms of art characteristics. METHODS: Regarding the research carried out as a cross-sectional type, a total of 613 students of a nursing school constituted the population, and 440 students selected by random sampling method constituted the sample. Before the research, written informed consent from the institution and verbal informed consent from the students were received. Student Identification Form, Communication Skills Scale (CSS) and Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS) were used as data collection tools. In analysis of the data, frequency, percentage, arithmetic average, standard deviation, median, minimum, maximum, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, Spearman’s rho Correlation tests were used. RESULTS: It was observed that 81.4% of the students were female, their average age was 20.26±1.92, their CSI point average was 167.25±17.16, and their point averages of CSS sub-dimensions were 57.21±6.07 in Behavioural, 56.68±6.39 in Mentally and 53.37±6.61 in Emotional; their TSIS point average was 106.55±15.42, and their point averages of TSIS sub-dimensions were 38.87±7.59 in Social Information Processing (SIP), 29.86±6.58 in Social Skills (SS) and 37.80±6.09 in Social Awareness (SA). Among students who stated that they were engaged in any branch of art (N=226), CSS and TSIS points of the students who said that they were engaged in auditory arts were significantly higher than the points of the students who were not engaged in auditory arts. Also, it was observed that there were statistically significant relationships between CSS total and subscale points and TSIS total and subscale points of nursing students. CONCLUSION: The communication skills of nursing students engaged in social and artistic events are better, and their social intelligence levels are higher. Therefore, nursing students' motivation should be increased to participate in social activities, and in this context they should be offered various options.

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