Introduction: The gradual increase in cultural diversification globally is the reason why people from different cultural groups have to live together. Cultural diversity often leads to misunderstandings, conflicts, ethnocentrism, discrimination and stereotyping. All of these are challenges for healthcare professionals around the world who need to take care of the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of patients. Purpose: In the diploma thesis we presented the cultural competencies of nurses. Accordingly, we investigated the cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity of nurses, the shortcomings of health professionals in the field of cultural competences, and identified what constitutes the greatest challenge for healthcare professionals in dealing with patients of different cultural beliefs. Methods: Based on the descriptive method of work, we systematically reviewed scientific and professional Slovenian and foreign literature in the field of cultural competencies in nursing. The articles were obtained from the online journal Slovenian Nursing Review, the Pubmed database, COBIB.SI and the web portal of the digital library of the University of Ljubljana. We used the keywords culture, cultural competencies, nursing. The age of the searchable literature was limited to the period of publication of the articles from 2005-2019. Results: Based on the principle of the hierarchy of finding evidence, we have included 19 scientific articles in the final analysis according to the identified research goals. We divided the study findings into four categories and described them with 59 codes. Discussion and conclusion: Cross-cultural competences in health care is crucial as the world becomes more multicultural over the years. Nurses today face the new and complex challenges posed by the culturally diverse and dynamic world in which we live. There are many obstacles to culturally competent nursing care, including ethnocentric personal beliefs and attitudes, lack of education, lack of knowledge, poor or insufficient language skills, and reliance on the interpreter to convey health messages. Campinha-Bacote's cultural competency process model can help nurses address cultural issues related to a person's low health literacy. Increasing the level of cultural competence and providing culturally competent nursing care can improve the quality of nursing care and health outcomes. There is little research on the role of self-awareness in cultural competences. One of the most significant challenges in the literature on the cultural competence of healthcare professionals is the lack of solid empirical evidence on various aspects of cultural competence and its actual impact on patient health.
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