Investigating the educational needs and culturally competent health care of primary education school nurses

OBJECTIVE To investigate the level of cultural competence of school nurses in providing person -centered health care to students of different cultural backgrounds. METHOD The research was based on the quantitative approach. The sample consisted of 116 primary school nurses, while the data collection was carried out by questionnaire. RESULTS School nurses possessed sufficient knowledge and skills in managing students with different cultural backgrounds and possessed a fairly high degree of awareness of ethnic and cultural issues. Nevertheless, they presented weaknesses in terms of providing effective health care to students with different characteristics, which was due to their insufficient training in transcultural issues since 40.5% of the participants stated that they had not received any training from the school while 24,1% stated that they have received enough knowledge from continuing professional education programs. The correlation of the factors with the demographic characteristics of the participants revealed that the factors, awareness (t=4.113, p=0.000) and training (t=2.847, p=0.005) showed a statistically significant difference between age groups. CONCLUSIONS School nurses have a crucial role in promoting the health of all students, including those from different cultural backgrounds. The way in which they will approach the students and the quality of care that will be provided in order to ensure the health of the students is directly linked to the enhancement of transcultural knowledge, skills and attitudes.