Paediatric Intensive Care Nurses' Intercultural Communication Competences

The purpose of this study was to investigate nurses’ experiences and competences on inter-cultural communication in a paediatric intensive care unit. The research was done in cooperation with Helsinki University Hospital’s Paediatric Intensive Care unit K9 in Children’s Clinic. The research describes intercultural communication from nurses’ perspective and indicates their ability to provide culturally competent care based on Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model. A framework was built to provide a comprehensive approach to the topic, including aspects of family-centered care, cultural competences and intercultural communication. Models of cultural competences and intercultural communication components were provided to build an overall view of the methods applicable to culturally competent care. The research was a qualitative study and was performed during autumn 2016. The research method used was focus group interview, with five (5) nurses from the unit. A theme interview was conducted to gain in-depth experiences and thoughts from the participants. Data was analysed by using content analysis. The results indicated that nurses in the paediatric intensive care unit regularly encounter challenges in intercultural communication. Even though intercultural communication was on occasion found challenging, nurses had a positive outlook towards encountering intercultural families. According to the analysis, four (4) themes rose from the focus group interview. The character of paediatric intensive care, linguistic challenges, cultural differences between health care staff and families as well as the effects of nurses’ personal abilities’ and capabilities’ on intercultural communication were raised in the focus group interview. The results indicate that one-sided communication and nurses’ personal abilities and capabilities had a significant effect on intercultural interactions. Nurses had a desire to work in a culturally sensitive manner to decrease marginalization of the families and to improve their feeling of equal and quality care. If it is not possible to communicate in words or signs, presence in the situation, eye contact and kind gestures were seen as an important part of non-verbal communication. Campinha-Bacote’s model (2002) applied into nurses’ competences indicated high desire and knowledge base on culturally competent care. Recommendations to improve outcomes of intercultural communication include improving education and awareness towards intercultural communication among the nurses in the pae-diatric intensive care unit. Communication should also be focused to be more interactive with intercultural families and emphasis on family-centered care should be in daily work. Focus should also be put on offering more support services for intercultural families. More research is also needed on intercultural families’ experiences of the support and communi-cation they have received