Preparing millennial nursing students, who prefer electronic communication, to interact with patients can be challenging. In addition, clinical agencies now expect students to come ready to apply key communication principles to improve patient satisfaction. YouTube was used as a teaching tool to prepare nursing students to meet current practice standards in communication. A short video (3 minutes) from YouTube, "AIDET: Henry Ford Health System," explored how to introduce yourself to a patient from the perspective of a care provider, and a discussion following this enabled students to actively identify key elements of a patient introduction. Students next viewed a set of trigger videos entitled "Say This, Not That: Patient Experience Video," which consisted of short vignettes (15 minutes) illustrating a patient going from an emergency room visit, to admission, to discharge. Finally, a series of short clips on YouTube from the film Wit (10 minutes) were viewed together showing 3 interactions between a patient with ovarian cancer and health care providers. The videos were paused for students to identify and discuss principles of therapeutic and nontherapeutic communication that they saw illustrated. The learning activity culminated with each student role playing an introduction with his/her first patient, with other students providing feedback about the interaction. Students left the activity with a clear foundation in how to structure therapeutic patient communication.

Submitted by: Elizabeth Sutton, MSN, RN, Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing, Queensborough Community College, Bayside, New York (mailto:[email protected]).