A comparative analysis of cultural competence in beginning and graduating nursing students

The ethnic proportions of the population in the United States are rapidly changing, with the nation's minority population at approximately 101 million. This is also true for the West Texas region, where locally in a city with 183,000 residents, 43 different languages are spoken suggesting that cultural education needs to be included in nursing program curricula. Therefore, a study was conducted during a period of curriculum revision to determine if the current nursing curriculum at a public university offers enough education and experience for graduating nurses to care for such a diverse population by comparing their perceptions of cultural competence with beginning sophomore nursing students' perceptions. Participants were asked to complete the Cultural Competence Assessment (CCA) tool in order to evaluate perceptions of cultural competence. Upon analysis of the data, perceptions of cultural competence among graduating nursing students were significantly higher (P = .002) than the perceptions of cultural competence among beginning nursing students. These results support that nursing students perceive that they have become culturally competent during their nursing education, leading to implications of the need for continued education relating to this concept, beginning with the first course and continuing throughout the nursing curriculum.