Cultural Competence Through Nurses' Narratives – a Qualitative Research of Hospital Nurses in Israel

The basis for this research is the understanding that Israeli health-care professionals meet and care for patients of various cultures backgrounds, which justifies our analysis concerning their readiness, awareness, sensitivity, and competence for transcultural nursing issues. The theoretical background of the research is based on the evidence that health care which is culturally, religiously and linguistically adequate improves compliance to treatment and the outcomes of the treatment. This research was guided by several conceptual models in transcultural nursing. The objectives of this study are: to explore the meaning given by hospital nurses in Israel to their competence to deliver culturally adequate nursing care that matches their patient's culture and origin; to evaluate the importance they attribute to culturally 'tailored' treatment according to patients’ cultural background; and to evaluate the importance they attribute to the need of special training in this subject. An in-depth interview was conducted with eight hospital nurses, and content analysis was applied. Results showed that the health-care professionals whom we interviewed care for patients from various cultural backgrounds and have developed personal resources like cultural-awareness, openness, flexibility and creativity.  While delivering care, nurses also faced many obstacles and difficulties that were rooted mainly in language and cultural barriers. Health-care professionals expressed their willingness to be trained in the area of cultural competencies, in order to improve the care they deliver.

Keywords: nurses, diverse-patients, cultural-background, obstacles, transcultural-education