Assessment of nurses' cultural competence levels

Cultural competence is an important requirement for quality nursing service delivery as well as reducing health inequalities. Nurses are expected to have high levels of cultural competence in order to provide culturally competent and adequate care to the individual, family and society. In this context, assessing the cultural competencies of nurses is an important public health priority. The purpose of this study; To determine the cultural competence level and related factors of nurses working in hospitals. The population of the cross-sectional study is nurses working at General Balad Hospital in Iraq. It was planned to reach the entire population and the research was conducted with 221 volunteer nurses between April and August 2022. Data was collected through the "Personal Information Form" and the "Nurse Cultural Competence Scale". To collect data, the units where nurses worked in the hospital were visited. In order to conduct the research, ethical approval was obtained from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, institutional permission from the hospital management and informed consent from the participants. In evaluating the research data; Descriptive statistical methods (number, percentage, min-max values, mean and standard deviation), Mann Whitney U test was applied for the difference between two independent groups in comparing quantitative data in non-normally distributed data, and Kruskal Wallis H test was applied for comparing more than two independent groups. In cases where there was a difference, corrected Bonferroni was used to find the group that made the difference. The relationship between continuous variables was examined with the Spearman correlation coefficient. Statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05. The average age of the nurses participating in the study was 32.45±9.37 years and their average clinical experience was 9.99±9.09 years. 61.1% of the participants are women and 69.2% are married. 18.1% of the participants stated that they spoke a language other than their native, and 10% had experience of working/living/studying abroad; 61.1% stated that they provided care to patients of different race/ethnicity/culture. 59.7% of the participants stated that one of the most difficult issues they had while caring for patients from different races/ethnicity/cultures was language problems. All of the participants stated that they wanted to care for patients from different cultures and that they had not received seminars or training on intercultural nursing care. The average score of the nurses on the Nurse Cultural Competence Scale is 83.49±7.37. It was determined that there was no statistically significant relationship between the nurses' scores on the Nurse Cultural Competence Scale and their age (r:0.031; p>0.05) and working experience (r:-0.017; p>0.05). It was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the scores of the Nurse Cultural Competence Scale according to the variables related to the individual and cultural characteristics of the nurses (p>0.05). Nurses have a high level of cultural competence. It is recommended to ensure the continuity of training programs that will increase the cultural competence levels of nurses in care services.