Exploring the growth trajectory of cultural competence in Taiwanese paediatric nurses

Aim: To explore the evolution of cultural competence in Taiwanese paediatric nurses. Background: Because transnational marriage has become a social phenomenon in Taiwan, the proportion of newborns of new immigrant mothers accounts for 8%–10% of total births every year. As family-centred care is the core value of paediatric nursing, it is necessary to teach caregivers how to take care of hospitalised children and perform related nursing care as well as to determine what difficulties nurses will encounter when they care for patients from diverse cultures and to find solutions for these problems. Unfortunately, few nursing programmes provide elective transcultural courses. Design: A phenomenological design was applied in the study. Method: A purposive sampling method was used. Nurses who had served in paediatric wards for over 1 year and who also had experience with taking care of the children of new immigrants were recruited as the informants. The data were collected through face-to-face in-depth interviews and analysed using Moustakas’ method (1994). Rigour and trustworthiness was based on Yardley's evaluative criteria. Results: The researcher interviewed ten paediatric nurses. Their average age was 31.6 years. The mean seniority of their service in paediatric wards was 6.3 years. Four major themes were obtained from the data, including perceiving difficulties related to caring for patients from diverse cultures, self-reflection on diverse cultures and the findings, finding approaches based on experiences with diverse cultures and new perceptions and identification with diverse cultures. Conclusions: In this study, clinical nurses were interviewed who had not had cultural competency training during their nursing education. It is suggested that such courses be provided for nurses to improve their cultural competence. Relevance for clinical practice: Accordingly, educational strategies could be generated to improve nurses’ cultural competence related to clinical applications.