Moving toward cultural competency: DREAMWork online summer program

This article describes the origination and implementation of an online, interactive summer component of the Diversity Recruitment and Education to Advance Minorities in the Nursing Workforce Program (DREAMWork) at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). The summer course was designed as a strategy to help prepare baccalaureate nursing students to provide both culturally sensitive and competent care through online learning. Sixteen baccalaureate nursing students participated in the four week online summer program. Course objectives were framed using Campinha-Bacote's (2002) model of cultural competence (Figure 1). Analysis revealed at the end of the four week summer program, students were more comfortable discussing their own prejudices and biases and were left with a deeper appreciation of what it meant to provide culturally sensitive care. The results of this summer program suggest the need to expand the online course to allow DREAMWork pre-nursing students to address the issue of becoming culturally competent prior to admission into upper division nursing clinical courses. This project was supported by funds from the Division of Nursing (DN), Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) under grant # D19HP08214.