Abstract
BackgroundNearly 20 % of the Swedish population is foreign-born. Increased exposure of patients from diverse cultures means there is an urgent need to address their unique requirements and provide optimal health care to a diverse population. Nursing schools thus have an important goal of educating nurses to ensure they are culturally competent. Culturally competent care improves safety and equity for patients. To measure cultural awareness among nursing students in Sweden, the aim of this study was to translate, adapt and test the validity and reliability of the Swedish version of a cultural awareness scale which has not previously been tested.MethodsA total of 158 nursing students from three universities in Sweden completed the 36-item questionnaire on cultural awareness. Verification of face and content validity and a translation/reverse translation process were first carried out.ResultsThe results indicate that one item (no 13) caused weak reliability and validity, and therefore it was removed. The reliability test result (with 35 items) showed Cronbach’s Alpha ranged from 0.60 to 0.87. The Model ChiSq group fit for five factors was 50.44 (31.27–77.06; Df = 5; p < 0.001), and the RMSEA was 0.24 (C.I 95 % = 0.18–0.30).ConclusionThe findings of the validity and reliability tests revealed that the CAS-scale for the 35 items is valid and reliable for use with Swedish nursing students. However, the CAS should be further tested in larger and more diverse samples of nursing students before being used in different socio-cultural settings.
Highlights
20 % of the Swedish population is foreign-born
In the second step a bilingual person who is familiar with the topic refined the translations and assessed equivalence, congruence and any colloquialisms used in the instrument
The findings only led to minor corrections of wording and layout. These findings indicate that the scale was validated in term of face validity and content, since the Swedish version is faithful to the essence of the original scale and the pilot test and it demonstrated that informants had no difficulty in comprehending the content of the scale
Summary
20 % of the Swedish population is foreign-born. Increased exposure of patients from diverse cultures means there is an urgent need to address their unique requirements and provide optimal health care to a diverse population. Foreign-born residents are shown to have an increased risk of varying health problems such as diabetes [6, 7] malnutrition [8], mental illness [9,10,11,12,13] and psychosomatic problems [6] due to mental stress. This puts demands on nurses to meet the unique needs. The aim of this study is to identify and validate an appropriate scale measuring baccalaureate nursing students’ cultural awareness in Sweden
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
