Nurse manager’s role in promoting culturally competent work environments in nursing: An integrative review

Abstract

Introduction: Today's nurse managers are challenged to effectively lead culturally diverse nursing teams for better care in multicultural work environments. Cultural competence has been described as a central tool to promote supportive working environments in organizations, to successfully lead a culturally diverse workforce and to plan and deliver culturally congruent care to patients. Goals: To analyze the evidence on the nurse manager’s role in promoting culturally competent nursing practice environments. Methods: Integrative review of literature of indexed studies in five databases of EBSCO (CINAHL, MEDLINE, MedicLatina, Cohcrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection) and ScienceDirect. We considered qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method design studies, literature reviews and text and opinion articles, published between 2012 and 2022, and presenting nurse leader or manager’s interventions to promote culturally competent work environments in all settings where nursing care is provided. Data were collected using a data extraction tool. Results: Eleven articles were included. It was identified nurse manager’s interventions oriented to patient care and interventions oriented to improve nurses’ relationships, at the organizational, unit and nurse levels. Conclusions: Nurse managers must participate in the development of policies at the organizational level, improve the coordination and organization of nursing care and resources in the units, and should invest in nurses' training and development, as well as their own, for better levels of cultural competence, leading to mutual understanding and respect in teams, and to the delivery of culturally congruent nursing care to people from different cultural backgrounds.

Transcultural nursing leadership: A concept analysis

“…Overall, there are positive consequences for a team, such as synergy and improved performance, after overcoming cultural differences that may lead to conflict. In nursing, transcultural leadership leads particularly to the delivery of culturally-congruent care to patients and optimal health outcomes for all populations ( Russell, 2022 ), which may require interventions by nurse leaders and managers at the organisational, unit, and nursing team levels, as suggested in the literature ( Teixeira et al., 2022a ).…”

“…Empirical research on transcultural nursing leadership remains limited; however, existing studies highlight the importance of nurse managers’ leadership practices in improving nurses’ and patients’ outcomes and promoting culturally competent nursing work environments ( Teixeira et al., 2022b , 2022a ).…”

International Portuguese Nurse Leaders’ Insights for Multicultural Nursing

“…Favorable nursing work environments are essential to improve nurses' satisfaction and retention; to decrease their burnout in organizations; to improve the quality of care, patients safety, the experience of care in hospital settings, patients' satisfaction with nurses' communication; to reduce mortality and decrease costs in organizations; and to increase their rating and recommendation index [7][8][9][10]. The international literature highlights nurse managers' interventions in multicultural nursing work environments at the organizational, unit and nurses' level towards patients' care and towards team's relationships [11].…”