Abstract

REIS, Alcinda Sacramento Costa dos  and  COSTA, Maria Arminda Mendes. Caring for Immigrants: from interacting in practice to building nurses’ cultural competencies. Rev. Enf. Ref. [online]. 2014, vol.serIV, n.2, pp.61-69. ISSN 0874-0283.  https://doi.org/10.12707/RIII13118.

Background: Immigrant care provides nurses with a new way to look at themselves and those they care for. According to Leininger and Meleis, the interaction between them underlies the development of cultural competencies in nurses and a balanced experience of transition processes in immigrants. Objectives: To study the process of building cultural competencies in nurses based on the identification of the meanings assigned in dyads in health care settings (family health units and immigrants’ households). Methodology: This qualitative and ethnographic study mobilised the researcher to be present in loco with the participants. Data were collected using narratives, participant observation, ethno- -biographical interviews and focus groups with a group of volunteers selected from health care units: 23 nurses, 27 immigrants and 2 privileged informants (a cultural mediator and a physician). Results: In health care contexts, nurses’ cultural competencies are built in a procedural way. This process begins with their interaction with immigrants; nurses then identify deficit areas in their cultural knowledge and skills; and recognise the bilateral cultural heritage during those meetings. Conclusion: In nurses’ clinical practice, cultural awareness, combined with the motivation to take care of immigrants, is based on an evolutionary basis, from ethnocentrism to ethnic relativism.

Keywords : cultural competency; nurses; emigrants and immigrants.

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