Taiwan is starting the transformation into a multicultural society because there are more and more foreign spouses from South-east Asia countries who married Taiwanese men and have been living in Taiwan. It’s important for nursing students to improve the multicultural caring competence in order to provide exceptional nursing care quality for foreign spouses. However, little is known about multicultural caring competence and related factors in nursing students in previous study. To fill up this gap, the purposes of this study were to 1) identify multicultural caring competence in Taiwanese nursing students, and 2) examine the relationship between the score of multicultural caring competence and the related factors including personal factors and experience factors.
Methods:
The investigator applied a cross sectional correlative study design to conduct this study. The participants were recruited from a medical technology university located in southern Taiwan by utilizing non-probability sampling. All participants completed the consent forms and the questionnaires. A demographic questionnaire, the Nurses' Multicultural Caring Competence Scale, and the Stereotype of Foreign Spouse Questionnaire were used to collect data. Data were analyzed by utilizing the SPSS Version 20.0 for Windows including descriptive statistical techniques, T-test, one-way ANOVA analysis, and Pearson correlation.
Results:
This study enrolled 126 Taiwanese nursing student participants in total. The mean age was 21.67 (SD = 2.09). The findings showed the mean score of multicultural caring competence in this sample was 125.47 (SD = 15.64). Most (59.0%) participants reported they seldom contacted with foreign spouses. Around 37.1% of participants reported they had face to face meeting experience with foreign spouses, and 23.4% of participants reported they got ideas of foreign spouses via television news. There was no significant relationship between multicultural caring competence and some factors including sex, living area, social economic status, or the meeting experience with foreign spouses. However, students who had learned trans-cultural nursing course showed significantly higher score of Nurses' Multicultural Caring Competence Scale (125.47 ± 15.64) than students who had not learned trans-cultural nursing course (92.66 ± 17.00). Moreover, there was a significantly and negatively correlative relationship between multicultural caring competence and the stereotype of foreign spouse (r= -2.47, p< 0.05).
Conclusion:
The results showed the multicultural caring competence was significantly associated with the experience of course of trans-cultural nursing and the stereotype of foreign spouse in nursing students in Taiwan. The findings can be used in the future to make a better design of trans-cultural nursing course content in nursing school. For example, a lesson which was designed to decrease student’s stereotype of foreign spouse might be helpful to increase student’s multicultural caring competence. The findings might help nursing students to improve multicultural caring competence and to enhance trans-cultural nursing quality of clinical practice. The evidence- based research method can be utilized in other countries to develop appropriate course content for trans-cultural nursing.