Cultural diversity in the nurse-client encounter

This study examined encounters between nurses and clients who originate from diverse cultures to determine the perspectives of both the nurse and the client concerning the experience of their time spent together. Fifteen nurses and 15 clients were interviewed separately after their encounter, and their responses were compared. Three major themes emerged from the data: descriptions of mutual satisfaction with the encounter (mentioned most often), different or incongruent perceptions of the encounter, and mutual dissatisfaction with the encounter. Themes in the category of mutual satisfaction were markedly similar to the themes of caring described by previous research. Although there were expressions of language difficulties and lack of knowledge of cultural differences, these did not appear to inhibit the mutual caring that was described.