PERCEPTION OF SOFT SKILLS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE NURSING STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the 21st century, there has been a surge in the demand of soft skills by employers to fit various roles in organizations. Skills could be imbibed or inherent. There are two types of skills which are the soft skill and the hard skill. The importance of soft skills cannot be overemphasized as they are determinants of efficiency and excellence. Nurses and Nursing students alike would benefit from the knowledge and use of these soft skills in learning and practice. This study was therefore carried out to find out the knowledge of soft skills among nursing students in the selected institution and their perception of the relevance of these skills to the nursing profession. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study done with the instrumentality of self-structured questionnaire. Students from 300-500 levels participated in the study and 196 out 189 responded. The results showed that 96(50.8%) of the respondents had poor knowledge of soft skills, 71(37.6%) had fair amount of knowledge while 22(11.6%) had good level of knowledge of soft skills. As regards perception, majority 114 (60.3%) of the respondents had negative perception while 75 (39.7%) had positive perception of the importance of soft skills. This study found that knowledge of soft skills among nursing students in University of Benin is low and their perception of its relevance to the nursing profession was negative. Further studies and soft skills awareness for nursing students is recommended.