Nurse Practitioner Students' Perceptions on Delivering Culturally Congruent Care to Vulnerable Mexican Immigrants: A Qualitative Study.

Increasingly, nurse practitioners serve as vanguards in providing primary health care to vulnerable Mexican immigrants. The aims of this study were to explore the lived experiences of nurse practitioner students in caring for Mexican immigrant patients and to capture their meaning of cultural influences deemed essential to the delivery of culturally congruent care. An exploratory descriptive design was employed. Purposive sampling was used to select 17 nurse practitioner students who volunteered to complete a semistructured face-to-face audio-taped interview and follow-up focus group discussion. Constant comparison was utilized to analyze data. From this process, four distinct themes emerged: Culturally congruent care extends beyond race and ethnicity, understands the importance of therapeutic communication, accepts complementary and alternative medical modalities, and recognizes the importance of eating patterns, food choices, and perceptions of ideal weight and health. These findings build on our understanding of key evidence-based cultural beliefs and practices that are important in delivering culturally congruent care to this subgroup.

Bridging the Gaps Through Nurse-Led Nutrition Education to Underserved Children.

Although children residing in impoverished rural communities located along the Texas-Mexico border are at disproportionately high risk of unhealthy eating, limited resources may prevent devoting sufficient attention to school-based nutrition education. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to examine the teaching effectiveness of graduate nursing students on fourth-grade student learning about healthy eating. Purposive sampling was used to select 213 predominately Hispanic fourth-grade students enrolled in one of three low-socioeconomic status underserved elementary schools located in rural South Texas. Ten graduate nursing students implemented the Creating Healthy Eating Choices for Kids Nutrition Curriculum to approximately 40 fourth-graders per group who attended weekly 45- to 50-minute sessions for 6 weeks. The MyPlate standardized tests were administered before and following the intervention. Results showed a significant improvement in learning on all program modules for fourth-graders from each school ( p = .000). Results support the value of creating a strategic partnership between a university school of nursing and key community leaders as a feasible method of providing nutrition education for fourth-graders enrolled in schools with limited resources.