Abstract

Session presented on: Thursday, July 25, 2013:

Purpose: In this increasingly global environment, it is essential that faculty help nursing students with strategies to understand cultures different from their own. Communication includes the ability to understand the cultural context and emotion. This was a challenge for undergraduate nursing students originating from a culture that internalizes and modulates emotion culture, who are placed into a culture that externalizes emotion. Beach et al., systematic review on cultural competence states working globally requires "establishing effective interpersonal and working relationships that supersede cultural differences." Yet, international students need to cope with many cultural differences; they need to grasp forms of communication within the context of the culture, appreciate these differences, and learn to manage effectively with them. Using Kelly's Personal Construct Theory, we developed strategies to assist Norwegian students to understand the emotions and experiences of psychiatric inpatients from a different social context.

Methods: This project includes two sets of methodologies: (1) the first describes the strategies, including creative games and exercises, to teach students to reflect, process and explore emotional and behavioral regulation in another culture; and (2) the second involves qualitative techniques including content and thematic analysis using student documentation and mentor interviews to learn about student perceptions of emotions and cultural competence.

Results: Nursing students stated that expressing emotions in public is discouraged in their country; however, in the Middle East emotions are vivid, visible and striking. Kelly's theory was effective in aiding faculty to assist students to translate and mediate the differences in the expression of emotions that they encountered. Still, they found the emotions too intense for them, at times.

Conclusions: Creative strategies that gradually intertwine attitudes and beliefs of home cultures with new cultures are useful ways of helping international nursing students to understand and work within a new culture.

Author Details

Dalit Wilhelm, RN, MA; Cheryl Zlotnick, RN, MS, MPH, DrPH

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Type

Presentation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

N/A

Research Approach

N/A

Keywords:

Cultural Competence, Global Perspectives, Nursing Education

Conference Name

24th International Nursing Research Congress

Conference Host

Sigma Theta Tau International

Conference Location

Prague, Czech Republic

Conference Year

2013

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Share

COinS
 

Nursing students in a global learning environment: Creative teaching strategies on culture, emotion and communication

Prague, Czech Republic

Session presented on: Thursday, July 25, 2013:

Purpose: In this increasingly global environment, it is essential that faculty help nursing students with strategies to understand cultures different from their own. Communication includes the ability to understand the cultural context and emotion. This was a challenge for undergraduate nursing students originating from a culture that internalizes and modulates emotion culture, who are placed into a culture that externalizes emotion. Beach et al., systematic review on cultural competence states working globally requires "establishing effective interpersonal and working relationships that supersede cultural differences." Yet, international students need to cope with many cultural differences; they need to grasp forms of communication within the context of the culture, appreciate these differences, and learn to manage effectively with them. Using Kelly's Personal Construct Theory, we developed strategies to assist Norwegian students to understand the emotions and experiences of psychiatric inpatients from a different social context.

Methods: This project includes two sets of methodologies: (1) the first describes the strategies, including creative games and exercises, to teach students to reflect, process and explore emotional and behavioral regulation in another culture; and (2) the second involves qualitative techniques including content and thematic analysis using student documentation and mentor interviews to learn about student perceptions of emotions and cultural competence.

Results: Nursing students stated that expressing emotions in public is discouraged in their country; however, in the Middle East emotions are vivid, visible and striking. Kelly's theory was effective in aiding faculty to assist students to translate and mediate the differences in the expression of emotions that they encountered. Still, they found the emotions too intense for them, at times.

Conclusions: Creative strategies that gradually intertwine attitudes and beliefs of home cultures with new cultures are useful ways of helping international nursing students to understand and work within a new culture.