Implementing a cultural competence training as a psychopolitical empowerment process

The cultural competence training (CCT) of health care professionals represents a useful resource to face the challenges involved in health care assistance for multicultural populations. However, the traditional perspective has shown limited results, as it does not consider professionals in their contexts and avoids continuous assessment processes. In response to these limitations, we describe a model of CCT implemented by two professors of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Seville in Spain as a psychopolitical empowerment process, and exemplified by the experience of the emergency nurses at the Virgen Macarena Hospital. This process adds the notion of power to traditional CCT and uses dialogic learning to: (a) state a mission and develop critical thinking; (b) take stock of the actions for change and increase the capacity of nurses to respond; and (c) motivate nurses to plan the future and take action. As a result, professionals become a learning community, able to develop a new professional identity and role, and can also implement actions for the transformation of health care settings.