Communication skills and self-esteem among undergraduate nursing students in UiTM Selangor, Puncak Alam Campus / Airina Raheimi ...[et al.]

Introduction: Self-esteem and communication skills are two important aspects that every university student should have especially nursing student. University education consists of presentation and group discussion while nursing profession involve dealing with lot of people which require nursing students to have good self-esteem and communication skills to survive in university life and in future nursing profession. Objectives: The aim of this study is to assess the self-esteem and communication skills among undergraduate nursing students in UiTM Selangor, Puncak Alam Campus. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 187 undergraduate nursing students from all semesters which were selected using purposive sampling. The instruments used in this study were Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA- 24) to evaluate self-esteem and communication skills. Results: Nursing students had moderate level of self-esteem and communication skills with mean scores of M=17.0, SD=3.0 and M=70.2, SD=4.0 respectively. However, (18.7%) had low level of self-esteem and (12.7%) had low communication skills. Upper second-class students were observed to have the highest communication skills scores compared to First class and Lower second class students. Besides, a poor positive correlation was observed between self-esteem and semesters. Conclusion: As a conclusion, nursing students have moderate self-esteem and communication skill but interventions still need to be considered as some students do have low self-esteem and communication skills.