RESUMO
For nursing and other health care students to be effective, remain in their training, and subsequently join the health care workforce, they need to have good therapeutic communication skills. This article presents an innovative strategy to improve therapeutic communication skills for nursing and health sciences students. The Video Inter-Active (VIA) computer-based, challenge-response-record-evaluate method used in this pilot study engaged students in realistic responses to scenarios commonly encountered in health care settings and provided them with opportunities to see themselves and critique their responses. Findings from this pilot study indicate that the VIA method is an effective and efficient way for students to develop and practice therapeutic communication skills. In a relatively short period (5 weeks), their learning from this method far