South African nurses have accepted the challenge that was brought about by the Health
Reform Policy of 1990 which opened health service centres to people of all racial and
cultural groups. However, recent studies on multicultural nursing have revealed that
problems have occurred when delivering care across cultural barriers. Most of these studies
have approached these problems from the patients point of view, where issues of
dehumanized care, labelling and discrimination have been reported.
Therefore, this study was an attempt to look into these problems from the nurses point of
view, by exploring the source of these problems, their effect on health care delivery and
possible solutions. The researcher focussed on three critical issues, namely, lack of cultural
knowledge, negative attitudes, as well as difficulty in communication.
Through focus group interviews (FGI) and responses to given scenarios, student nurses who
had experienced problems with culturally different patients were given a chance to reflect
on their experiences, report on these experiences and recommend possible solutions to the
experienced problems.
The results revealed that:
1. The major source of the problems was lack of experience due to inadequate exposure to
culturally diverse groups which in tum led to inappropriate decisions and actions at care
delivery level.
2.Difficult perceptions and negative attitudes lead to the formation of stereotypes which
block the delivery of culturally congruent care.
3 .Inability to communicate due to differences in spoken language lead to difficulty in
building the trust relationship and hence inadequate care delivery.Health StudiesM.A. (Nursing Science
