Cultural awareness in nursing students studying under classic and integrated education systems

32^nd Euro Nursing and Medicare Summit

October 26-28, 2017 | Paris, France

Kader Mert and Esra Y�±ld�±z

Kocaeli University, Turkey
Atat�¼rk University, Turkey

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Aim: Teaching cultural awareness has an important place in educating professional nurses who will be providing healthcare services to populations of diverse cultures. The purpose of this study is to examine the cultural awareness of nursing students studying under different models of education at universities in different parts of the country. Materials & Method: The study is of comparative descriptive design. Data for the research were collected over the period January - April 2017. The Cultural Awareness Scale and a questionnaire were used as data collection instruments. The t-test, One-way Anova, percentages and means were used in the analysis of the data. Results: The mean age of the students was 20.79�±1.87 and 29.4% were men. Of the participants, 94% had not received crosscultural training. Of the students, 34.6% described the adequacy of their cultural awareness as "inadequate". Another 27% had cared for individuals coming from different cultural backgrounds and 71.2% of these had experienced difficulties in providing healthcare. The most common difficulty encountered was language for communication (75.6%). There were statistically significant differences between the cultural awareness scores of the third-year students receiving classic and integrated nursing education (p<.01). Furthermore, it was observed that cultural awareness scores increased with the class of the students at both universities and this increase was statistically significant (p<.01). Conclusion: Cultural awareness must be instilled in nursing students over the course of their education. Students should receive training in cross-cultural nursing and be given the opportunity to reinforce their skills by practicing with individuals coming from different cultural backgrounds.

Biography :

Kader Mert has completed her PhD from Community Health Nursing Department in Marmara University, Turkey. She has been working as an Assistant Professor in Community Health Nursing Department at Kocaeli University for 3 years. She has published 6 articles in international and national journals, 6 oral/poster international presentations and 18 national oral/poster presentations. She has two book sections in national books. She is interested service of vulnerable children. Her Master’s thesis is about school health nursing interventions and PhD thesis is about children working in the streets.