The Impact of Counselling Skills Training on the Interpersonal Skills of Undergraduate Occupational Therapy Students

Abstract

A considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of social and communication skills within the health care professions. As a result, many pre-registration education and training courses now include counselling skills modules, on the basis that these will ultimately enhance a range of interpersonal skills within clinical practice. In order to test this assumption, a study was carried out to assess whether completion of counselling skills assignments had an impact upon a range of interpersonal skills in occupational therapy. Using 36 first-year undergraduate occupational therapy students, the study investigated two related hypotheses. The first hypothesis compared the interpersonal skills performance on placement between those students who had completed the counselling skins assignment and those students who had completed an alternative. An unrelated t-test produced a non-significant result (t = 1.386, df = 34, p>0.05), which suggested that undertaking a counselling skills assignment had no effect on social skills. The second hypothesis was concerned with the relationship between interpersonal performance and the grade obtained for the counselling assignment. A Pearson's product moment correlation was carried out which also produced a non-significant result (r = 0.008, df = 34, p>0.05). This suggested that no relationship existed between performance on the counselling skills module and interpersonal skills in the clinical domain. These results challenge existing assumptions about the value of including counselling skills modules within pre-registration occupational therapy courses, and highlight the need to seek more effective alternatives for enhancing essential interpersonal skills.