Intercultural sensitivity of the nurses caring for foreign patients according to their empathy levels

In Turkey, intense migration process causes many problems such as economic, social, health and cultural ones. In this context, the nurses may encounter problems while caring for patients from different cultures. In such a case, to prevent these ethic problems it is notably important to know how the selected group perceive illnesses and health and how to react them. Therefore, this research is carried out to determine intercultural sensitivity of the nurses caring for foreign patients according to their empathy levels. The nurses working at a public hospital in Gaziantep create this descriptive research's system. In the research, it is aimed to reach all the population without having sampling choice and the research has been fulfilled with 203 nurses. The data are collected from Intercultural Sensitiviy Scale and Emphatic Tendency Scale. I.S.S: The validity and reliability study is performed and adapted to Turkish language by Ms.Bulduk and her friends. The scale consists of responsibility in communication, respect for cultural differences, self-confidence in communication, enjoyment of communication, sub-dimensions of having a care in communication and the total score. In this scale, the lowest total score which can be got is 24 and the highest score is 120. As the total score increases, the level of intercultural sensitivity increases proportionally. However, E.T.S is developed to evaluate empathy level by Ü.Dökmen in 1988. The score that can be got is between 20-100 and the increase of the score shows the increase of emphatic tendency and the decrease of the score shows the decrease of the empathethical tendency. The data obtained from the research are evaluated by Student t, One Way Anova ve Kruskal Wallis tests. It is determined that %35,5 of the nurses are between 26-33 age group, % 65,0 of them are licence graduate, %37,9 of them have been progressed their career for 10-20 years, %52,2 of them work as nurse's post , %59,6 of them choosing their career voluntarily, %45,8 of them caring for foreign patients for 0-3 years and %97,0 of them facing many problems in this process. It is determined that sub-dimensions' total score averages are, responsibility in communication 24,8±4,5, respect for cultural differences 21,7±3,7, self-confidence in communication 16,4±3,5, enjoyment of communication 10,9±2,3, having a care in communication 10,6±2,2 and the total score 84,9±11,2 respectively. Also, total score average of E.T.S is determined as 67,3±8,6. It is assessed that there is a highly positive correlation between the empathetical tendency level and the intercultural sensitivity level of the nurses. In this research, it is seen that the empathethical tendency level and the intercultural sensitivity level of the nurses caring for foreign patients are 'above the average level' and as the empathethical tendency increases, the intercultural sensitivity level increases, too. According to these results, in this process, the nurses caring for foreign patients can be supported in terms of issue management.