Abstract
BackgroundCultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients. Still, great difficulty exists in assessing the cultural competence of mental health nurses. There are no Portuguese validated measurement instruments to assess cultural competence in mental health nurses. This paper reports a study testing the reliability and validity of the Portuguese version of the Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale–MMHAS in a sample of Portuguese nurses.MethodsFollowing a standard forward/backward translation into Portuguese, the adapted version of MMHAS, along with a sociodemographic questionnaire, were applied to a sample of 306 Portuguese nurses (299 males, 77 females; ages 21–68 years, M = 35.43, SD = 9.85 years). A psychometric research design was used with content and construct validity and reliability. Reliability was assessed using internal consistency and item–total correlations. Construct validity was determined using factor analysis.ResultsThe factor analysis confirmed that the Portuguese version of MMHAS has a three-factor structure of multicultural competencies (Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills) explaining 59.51 % of the total variance. Strong content validity and reliability correlations were demonstrated. The Portuguese version of MMHAS has a strong internal consistency, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.958 for the total scale.ConclusionsThe results supported the construct validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of MMHAS, proving that is a reliable and valid measure of multicultural counselling competencies in mental health nursing. The MMHAS Portuguese version can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of multicultural competency training programs in Portuguese-speaking mental health nurses. The scale can also be a useful in future studies of multicultural competencies in Portuguese-speaking nurses.
Highlights
Cultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients
The items of the Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale (MMHAS) Portuguese version total scale can be divided into three subscales: Cultural Awareness, Cultural Knowledge, and Cultural Competence/Skills, according the tripartite cultural competence model [26]
The findings show that the Portuguese version of the MMHAS adequately addressed the original concepts and dimensions, and demonstrated a high level of equivalence with the original version
Summary
Cultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients. Great difficulty exists in assessing the cultural competence of mental health nurses. There are no Portuguese validated measurement instruments to assess cultural competence in mental health nurses. In 2015, Europe is suffering from the worst refugee crises since World War II. These refugees are fleeing war, violence and persecution in their country of origin. Immigrants and asylum-seekers have a higher risk of mental illness due to the fact that they often have been exposed to extreme conditions—for instance, forced migration, significant personal losses and other human rights violations- due to the fact that they are refugees in a foreign country, with different cultural norms [2]. While many immigrants and refugees are resilient, traumatic experiences and migration stressors have a great impact on their mental well-being [3,4,5]
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