To investigate clinical communication competence among nursing students during different stage of clinical practice, so as to provide evidence for clinical nursing educators to formulate better training plans for clinical communication competence of nursing students.

Using stratified sampling, a total of 280 nursing students who entered clinical practice from 12 colleges and universities in Henan Province were selected. The survey was conducted in three stages of nursing students internship from July 30, 2019 to February 17, 2020. Using Clinical Communication Ability Assessment Scale for Nursing Students, 3 rounds of online questionnaire surveys were conducted when the nursing students entered the clinical practice in the second, fifth, and eighth months. There were 254 (90.7%) responses in the first round of the questionnaire, 210 (75.0%) in the second round and 193 (68.9%) in the third round of the questionnaire.

In the three-stage assessment, the total scores of Clinical Communication Ability Assessment Scale for Nursing Students were respectively (3.27±0.39) , (3.29±0.35) and (3.27±0.37) , and the difference was not statistically significant (P>0.05) .

The clinical communication ability of nursing students does not improve with the increase of practice time, suggesting that clinical nursing managers should appropriately increase the curriculum and training of nurse-patient communication skills of nursing students in the clinical practice stage.

Students, nursing; Clinical communication; Longitudinal study