Perception of Thai Nursing Students and Faculty’s Competence toward Caring for Culturally Diverse Clients

This descriptive study aimed to examine the culturally competence perception of Thai nursing students and faculty for caring diverse clients. A convenience sample of 121 second year, 107 fourth year of baccalaureate students, and 42 faculty members at Faculty of Nursing, Prince of Songkla University was recruited to measure using Cultural Care Completence Scale-Thai composed of Cultural Knowledge Test and Self-Cultural Competence Test. Focus group discussions were also conducted as additional method. The questionairre was exmained content validity by experts. The reliability of Cultural Knowledge Test was obtained by discrimination index of .73 and point biserial correlation ranged from .3 - .8. The Cronbach’s alpha of Self-Cultural Competence Test was .89. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistic and simple content analysis. Findings revealed that majority of the second year students (81.1%) and the fourth year students (71.5%) perceived their culturally competence at the level of cultural aware, however majority of the faculty (58.8%) perceived their culturally competence at the level ot cultural competence. The perception of the cultural skill was the highest mean score of the second year students, the fourth year students, and faculty (X¯ = 17.72, S.D. = 1.835; X¯= 17.99, S.D. = 2.146 and X¯= 18.95, S.D. = 2.501 respectively), and the perception of the cultural knowledge was the lowest mean score of the second year sudents, the fourth year students, and faculty (X¯ = 9.38, S.D. = 2.499; X¯ = 9.96, S.D. = 2.244, and X¯ = 9.93 , S.D. = 2.908 respectively). The results suggest that teaching and delivering culturally competence care are challenging and requiring further studies to develop an effective model by using richness of the clinical setting with real-world clients and their cultural needs.