Paper
Wednesday, 19 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Cultural Competence in Nursing Students
Influencing Nursing Students' Cultural Competency Through an International Healthcare Experience
Patricia Biller Krauskopf, PhD, RN, CFNP and Kathryn M. Ganske, PhD, RN. Division of Nursing and Respiratory Care, Shenandoah University, Winchester, VA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Discuss an educational strategy involving nursing students' participation in an international health care experience and resulting influence on cultural competency.
Learning Objective #2: Describe rewards and challenges of international travel with students.
Cultural diversity is a skill that has become essential for nurses in today's healthcare environment. Nurses must be culturally competent in order to deliver care to, and effectively communicate with, patients of varied ethnic backgrounds. Immersing students within a different culture via international travel is one technique for developing the culturally competent nurse. At Shenandoah University (SU), students have the opportunity for cultural immersion through the Global Experiential Learning (GEL) program. GEL allows for faculty supervised international experiences for three week periods, within the framework of an academic course. Students earn three elective credits that count toward degree requirements upon completion of the course. The pilot nursing course “International Health Care” developed by the authors for the GEL program was implemented during July and August 2005. Course objectives include cultural concept synthesis, ethical issues and global factors impacting health care, influencing cultural sensitivity, observation of health care delivery, identifying cultural beliefs that influence health behaviors, and integrating academic and cultural experiences. Nursing students and the authors traveled to three university schools of nursing and healthcare systems in Thailand. SU students and faculty partnered with Thai students and faculty to learn about the multi-tiered Thai healthcare delivery system. An initial analysis of student assignments in fulfillment of course requirements demonstrated successful achievement of course objectives. Results will be reported from a pilot study measuring students' level of cultural competency after engaging in this program. The findings from this pilot may result in establishing routine cultural competency measurement with future GEL experiences that are currently being developed in other international settings. In addition to presenting results of the study, experiential wisdom regarding the rewards and challenges of international travel with students will be discussed.

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