Attitudes and cultural self-efficacy levels of nurses caring for patients in army hospitals.

This descriptive, cross-sectional study was a convenience sample of 104 registered nurses (N = 104) from three Army hospitals who participated anonymously in this study. Participating in the study were 62 (n = 62) active-duty Army nurses and 41 civilian nurses (n = 41), and one nurse that did not specify status (n = 1). The purpose of the study was to investigate attitudes and cultural self-efficacy levels in caring for ethnically diverse patients. Three research questions were generated that included: (1) What are the attitudes and cultural self-efficacy levels of nurses caring for patients in Army hospitals? (2) Are there differences in attitudes and cultural self-efficacy levels based on the nurses' age, ethnic/racial group, sex, employment status, education, military experience, and nursing experience? And, (3) What relationship exists between nurses' attitudes and their cultural self-efficacy levels? The research instrument was an aggregated instrument consisting of three different instruments including: (1) the Updated Joseph Ethnic Attitude Assessment Survey (EAAS) based on Rooda's Cultural Fitness Survey; (2) a Cultural Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES) (Bernal & Froman, 1986; 1992), and (3) a Demographic Questionnaire. Analysis of the data suggested that there were significant differences among the nurses that were based on sex, ethnicity, and military status. For the attitudes section of the EAAS questionnaire, nurses were more positive toward patients of similar ethnic backgrounds Female nurses were more positive than male nurses, and civilian nurses were more positive than their military counterparts. For the Cultural Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES), nurses expressed a fairly high degree of confidence in their knowledge of cultural concepts They also expressed high confidence in their transcultural skills for African-Americans and Latino Americans and low confidence for Asian Americans Male nurses expressed higher confidence levels than female nurses, and military nurses expressed higher confidence levels than civilian nurses.