Speak for Success: A Pilot Intervention Study on Communication Competence of Post-Hire International Nurses

Speak for Success was a research study designed to test the effectiveness of an evidence-based, comprehensive communication training program for international nurses. A total of 79 registered nurses from two hospitals in southern Nevada participated in this quasi-experimental, two-phase study. Two interventions were included: a 10-week linguistics course focusing on phonology (pronunciation and accent reduction) by a certified speech pathologist and four workshops on the social and cultural aspects of communication conducted by intercultural communication experts. This study indicated that a short-term linguistic intervention was effective in reducing phonologic errors of international nurses regardless of gender, age, country of origin, or length of residency in the United States. For the second intervention, despite a tendency of improvement for some communication variables, differences in between-group and within-group comparisons were not significant, possibly because of the high level of acculturation among the sampled nurses as a result of living and working in the United States for an extended period of time.