Abstract:
Cultural competency is particularly important in healthcare industry nowadays, where cultural beliefs have a significant impact on care access, treatment choices, effectiveness of nursing care, and other aspects of patient care. The main purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to evaluate the multi-cultural competency in nurses and to investigate the effect of the care case-based intervention package (12-weekly training and 2-monthly boosters) on the multi-cultural competency in nurses from two medium-size private hospitals in Bangkok, Thailand with similarity in therapeutic specialties and other characteristics in three categories: multi-cultural knowledge, attitude towards different cultures and cultural practice in nurses. The samples were selected using proportional simple random sampling (SRS) method. The sample included 166 nurses (83 nurses from each hospital): Mongkutwattana hospital as control group and Navamin 9 hospital as intervention group. The data was collected using a validated, piloted and reliable self-administered questionnaire and analyzed in SPSS 16.0 using descriptive statistics, regression, t-test, Chi-square and repeated measures using ANOVA and ANCOVA analyses. The analysis showed that the overall level of cultural competency of nurses was classified as low to moderate (75.9% of all nurses scored low multi-cultural knowledge competency while 63.3% and 71.7% of all nurses scored moderate attitude towards different cultures and cultural practice respectively). Further, the 12-weekly training alone resulted in a significantly improved multi-cultural knowledge competency level (P<0.01). However, the knowledge competency level had been found to drop after the training had stopped even 2-monthly boosters were given (P>0.05 as compared to pre-test level). The attitude competency and the nursing practice competency levels were not affected by the intervention package at all (P>0.05). The study has concluded that the good quality of cultural practice was primarily driven by the positive confidence and attitude while the experience factors, level of knowledge and other background marginally affected the quality of cultural practice. Also, the intervention has been found to have significant impact on the improvement of multi-cultural knowledge competency. However, longer-term study may be required in order to effectively study the effect of the intervention on the cultural competency in nurses in a longer-term, especially, on the attitude and nursing practice competency.
