Cultural desire: 'caught' or 'taught'?

There has been much discussion in the literature on what constitutes cultural competence training in nursing education and practice. The health profession literature supports a growing consensus that cultural competency curricular content should focus on attitudes, skills and knowledge. However, affective constructs, such as cultural desire, have received little attention in the transcultural health care literature. Some argue that affective constructs such as desire must be 'caught' rather than 'taught', for how does one objectively measure or evaluate whether or not a student has obtained cultural desire? The purpose of this article is to more fully explore the construct of cultural desire in an attempt to identify meaningful ways that cultural desire can not only be 'caught' by faculty who model this construct, but also be 'taught' within nursing curricula as a foundational component of cultural competence.