The effect of midwives' intercultural communication anxiety on intercultural competence

Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine the effect of intercultural communication anxiety on intercultural competence of midwives Material-method: Since the number of midwives working in a single health institution is insufficient and the conduct of the study in more than one health institution will cause problems in terms of the duration of the thesis, it is planned to collect the data of the research by using the online data collection form without distributing a face-to-face questionnaire. It is planned to reach midwives working in Turkey who meet the inclusion criteria using an online survey. According to the data of the Ministry of Health (2022); There are 56,351 midwives working in Turkey (Sb. 2022). Accordingly, it was planned that the smallest sample that could be taken with p = 0.05 and 5% margin of error would consist of 357 midwives by using the sample calculation method known to the universe of the sample number of the study. Results: A total of 363 midwives participated in the study, with a mean age of 32.56 ± 9.07 years, and 75.2% of them holding a bachelor's degree. Among the participants, 34.5% reported frequently providing services to migrant individuals, and 60.3% experienced difficulties during service delivery. Of these difficulties, 93.1% were identified as communication problems, and 45.4% used interpreters to address these issues. It was determined that 52.1% of the midwives included in the study had a high level of intercultural communication anxiety, and their intercultural competence scale score was 3.33 ± 0.34, which is above average. Based on these results, it can be stated that the midwives have a good level of intercultural competence. Furthermore, a significant relationship was found between intercultural communication anxiety and intercultural competence in this study. Conclusion: The study found a significant positive relationship between midwives' intercultural communication anxiety and their intercultural competence. As midwives' intercultural communication anxiety increased, their intercultural competence also increased.