[The Italian version of the Nurse Cultural Competence Scale: validation on a sample of Nursing students]

Social complexity is growing, due to the current phenomenon of migration. Nurses are called to face this situation through development and consolidation of adequate cultural competence, to provide appropriate assistance to foreigner patients. Many tools and scales are routinely used worldwide to measure nurses' cultural competence, but in the Italian context neither theoretical models nor scales currently exist. The aim of this study is to validate in Italian the "Nurse Cultural Competence Scale" (NCCS), an assessment tool which measures the cultural competence level of nursing staff.

The NCCS scale has been back translated and applied to a sample of nursing students of the San Paolo Hospital in Milan; the scale has been assessed for validity and reliability.

The tool shows satisfactory consistency (alfa=0.91), content validity (CVI=95.8) and factor structure (confirmatory factor Index =0.976, Tucker-Lewis Index=0.987, RMSEA= 0.040, SRMR=0.029). The alpha coefficient of the confirmatory factor solution was .90.

The NCCS is valid and reliable; its use represents therefore the first steps in order to identify and increase nurse cultural competence in Italy.