Caring for refugees: Measuring cultural competence in nursing students

Objective: The aims of this study were to evaluate the effect of working with refugee clients and incorporating content on cultural competence in a BSN Community Health Course on students self perceived cultural competence, and to enhance nursing faculty's knowledge of appropriate clinical sites for increasing cultural competency level in students. Background: A growing body of knowledge on health disparities reveals minority health care in the U.S. is influenced by health professional bias and inadequate preparation in cultural competency. Nurse educators are in a key position to not only teach students about cultural competency, but to facilitate their learning through different strategies in the clinical setting. Methods: This study was a two group pretest posttest quasi-experimental design to evaluate didactic and clinical teaching concepts in a BSN community health course. Results: The overall findings suggest that although the community health course increased the students' self-perceived level of cultural competence, working with refugee clients did not have a statistically significant effect. The students working with refugee clients did show an increase in mean scores on the post-test CCCHS, but it was not statistically significant. Some demographic variables also showed some influence on an increase in cultural competency scores. Conclusions: Study findings support previous research. Providing clinical and didactic exposure to people of diverse cultures and concepts will assist nursing students to increase their level of cultural competence.