Effects of cultural education and cultural experiences on the cultural competence among undergraduate nursing students

Because of globalization and growing immigrant populations, nursing students need to possess a high level of cultural competence to provide nursing care to patients from various cultural backgrounds. However, it has been reported that the current cultural education in nursing curriculums is not sufficient to improve students' cultural competence. Little is known about how nursing students' personal experiences of other cultures may impact their cultural competence. This study was conducted to identify the ways in which cultural education and personal experiences with other cultures affect nursing students' cultural competence. A questionnaire-based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 236 Korean nursing students from four universities in South Korea. The explanatory power of cultural experiences and cultural education for nursing students' cultural competence was 8.1% and 7.1%, respectively. The present study revealed that the explanatory power of the variable for nursing students' cultural competence increased when cultural experiences were added to cultural education. Among cultural experiences, contact with people from other cultural areas influenced nursing students' cultural competence the most. Therefore, it is recommended to encourage nursing students to engage in extracurricular activities with people from other countries, adding this to organized lectures on cultural education.