Effect of Cultural Intelligence (CI) on Patient Care Services in Private Hospitals at Muscat Governorate

Abstract

The increasing need for medical care has led to demand for private medical institutions which offer more personalized care. Most of the patients have grown to prefer private medical attention as compared to public medical care due to the better services offered. Nurses interact with patients on a daily basis who are from different cultural backgrounds which makes it essential for them to understand various cultures to be able to interact and effectively serve all the patients visiting the hospital. Private hospitals in Oman receive patients from diverse cultural backgrounds. In this research, an attempt was made to find out the level of Cultural intelligence in various dimensions and to examine the effect of nurses’ cultural intelligence (CI) on patient care services in private hospitals at Muscat governorate. Hence, nurses from Muscat governorate private hospitals were the study's respondents. The data was analysed using the Quartile method, Chi-square, and multiple regression analysis. This research found that the nurses have high level of cultural intelligence in cognitive and meta-cognitive dimensions. On the other hand, majority of the respondents had low level of behavioural dimension of cultural intelligence. And there is no significant relationship between demographic details and the level of cultural intelligence. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated a significant relation between nurse’s cultural intelligence in various dimensions and patient care services.