Cultural competence among nursing students and nurses working in acute care settings: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Background The increasing cultural diversity in healthcare in European countries, including Austria, has highlighted the need to enhance nurses’ cultural competence. Assessing cultural competence and identifying relevant influencing factors can help to improve culturally competent care. The aim of this study was to assess the cultural competence of nurses and nursing students working in Austrian acute care settings and to identify influencing factors using the Cultural Competence Assessment scale. Methods A cross-sectional design was used. Data collection was carried out in March 2021 with nurses and nursing students in the last year of their studies who were working in Austrian acute care settings. Descriptive analysis was applied to display the general characteristics of the study participants and the levels of their overall cultural competence. A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to analyze the influencing factors of cultural competence. Results The nurses’ cultural competence level was moderate to high (mean = 3.89; SD = .48). Their age, educational level, cultural diversity training and self-perceived cultural competence significantly influenced the level (F (6, 875) = 18.971, p < .0000, adj. R2 = 1.09). Conclusions Providing culturally competent healthcare services for culturally diverse patients is essential for all healthcare professionals, and especially for nurses who spend the most time with patients. Effective interventions, such as educational training, need to be implemented in order to deliver culturally competent care and potentially reduce disparities in healthcare and improve patient outcomes.

Cultural Competence and Associated Factors Among Nurses Working in Public Hospitals of South Wollo Zone, Northeast Ethiopia: A multi-center Cross-sectional study

“…As the experience of caring for multicultural patients increases, the mean score of cultural competencies also increases by 0.141 unit (β = 0.141, CI = 0.248-0.476) compared to their counterparts. This trend is consistent with studies conducted in Austria [10] , India [11] , China [12] , Taiwan [22] , Saudi Arabia [27] , and Ethiopia [15] . This could be attributed to the fact that the more frequently nurses provide care to patients from diverse cultural backgrounds, the more knowledgeable and sensitive they become to culturally competent care practices.…”

“…In this study, the cultural competence subscale with the highest score was cultural awareness, a trend consistent with ndings from the USA [8] , Austria [10] , Taiwan [22,26] , Indonesia [24] , and Assossa in western Ethiopia [15] . However, cultural knowledge emerged as the subscale with the lowest score, mirroring a study conducted in Taiwan [22] .…”

“…In the current study, the mean score of cultural competence was moderate level. This is comparable with ndings from USA [8] , Italia [21] , Austria [10] , India [11] , China [12] , Taiwan [22] , and Korea [23] . Furthermore, it is in line with ndings in Assossa western Ethiopia [15] , and Amhara region northwestern Ethiopia [14] .…”

Integrated care competencies and their association with cross‐cultural competence among registered nurses: A cross‐sectional questionnaire survey

“…Nearly half of our participants had received multicultural education in their degree, which was similar to the other study findings conducted by Shepherd et al (2019) (Cicolini et al, 2015;Dobrowolska et al, 2020;Osmancevic et al, 2023;Schenk et al, 2022;Wahlström et al, 2020), and they have highlighted the importance of cross-cultural education in healthcare professionals' competence development (Paric et al, 2021;Shepherd et al, 2019). Despite the integration of cultural competence in Finnish nursing education, the level of implementation of cultural competence in nursing curricula and its evaluation varies among nursing programmes, and systematic work on integrating and evaluating cultural competence in Finnish nursing education is required (Paric et al, 2021).…”

“…It has been suggested to implement effective educational training for nurses to develop their cultural competence and eliminate health disparities(Osmancevic et al, 2023). Regarding the domains of CCC, our result demonstrated that RNs had the least competency in the emotions/empathy domain.…”