Effect of a mobile app-based cultural competence training program for nurses: A pre- and posttest design

Background: Importance of providing culturally competent nursing care and cultural competence training for nurses has increased due to diversification of the cultural backgrounds of patients in South Korea. Currently there is little cultural competence training provided to nurses in South Korea. Objectives: This study aimed to develop and evaluate a mobile app-based cultural competence training program for nurses working at a tertiary teaching hospital in South Korea. Design: A one group pre- and posttest intervention design. Settings: A tertiary teaching hospital in South Korea. Participants: A total of 49 nurses participated in the study. Methods: A mobile app-based cultural competence training program for nurses was developed using the five stages of the ADDIE instructional model. Cultural competence scores were compared between pre- and posttest using the paired t-test. The differences in cultural competence scores between pre- and posttests were also compared by participant characteristics using analysis of variance, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and the MannWhitney-Wilcoxon test. Results: The mean total score of the nurses increased significantly after participating in the program, from 63.00 to 81.06 (p < 0.001). Comparisons of differences in cultural competence scores between pre- and posttests by participant characteristics revealed that the improvement in cultural competence was greater in those with no experience abroad for longer than 1 month compared to those who had experience abroad for longer than 1 month (p < 0.001) and in those who had never cared for a foreign patient compared to those who had cared for more than three foreign patients per week (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The mobile app-based cultural competence training program developed in this study was demonstrated to be effective in improving the cultural competence of nurses in South Korea. Our novel training program can be applied as on-the-job training to improve the cultural competence of nurses.