Transformative elements of intercultural education for Japanese nursing students

Enhancing intercultural sensitivity in Japanese nursing students through international online nursing courses: A quasi-experimental study

BACKGROUND

Globalization has highlighted the importance of being competent in communicating with people of various cultural backgrounds.

PURPOSE

To evaluate the effect of international courses for nursing students through online education in terms of intercultural sensitivity and perceived English proficiency.

DESIGN

A one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with an online self-reported questionnaire was conducted.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTINGS

Participants were second-, third-, and fourth-year nursing students at a medical university in Tokyo in the spring term of 2021.

METHOD

Measurements were performed before and after the international nursing courses, which consisted of 1) nursing communication English, taught by native English instructors to second- and third-year students; and 2) international health nursing, taught by overseas-experienced faculty members to fourth-year students. Furthermore, there is an elective Collaborative Online International Learning course, where students discuss, collaborate, and complete common assignments with students from a university in the United States. Intercultural sensitivity was measured using the Japanese version of the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale. The pre- and post-test intercultural sensitivity were compared using a paired t-test. Content analysis was employed to analyze the open-ended questions.

RESULTS

A total of 104 students' data were analyzed. Students' intercultural sensitivity mean improved significantly from 79.88 ± 8.47 (pre) to 83.04 ± 8.63 (post). Participants in the elective course (n = 7) showed significantly higher intercultural sensitivity levels than non-participants. The self-evaluated English proficiency of second- and third-year students who took English courses significantly improved after the courses. Themes extracted by elective course participants revealed students' perceptions toward learning about diverse cultures, resilience, and intercultural communication skills, which they can utilize for nursing practice in the future.

CONCLUSION

Taking international nursing courses can increase nursing students' intercultural sensitivity. Universities are encouraged to provide international nursing courses to help enhance their cultural sensitivity and competency for their future nursing careers.

The ubiquity of uncertainty: a scoping review on how undergraduate health professions' students engage with uncertainty

Although the evidence base around uncertainty and education has expanded in recent years, a lack of clarity around conceptual terms and a heterogeneity of study designs means that this landscape remains indistinct. This scoping review explores how undergraduate health professions' students learn to engage with uncertainty related to their academic practice. To our knowledge, this is the first scoping review which examines teaching and learning related to uncertainty across multiple health professions. The scoping review is underpinned by the five-stage framework of (Arksey and O'Malley in Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8(1) 19-32, 2005). We searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, ISI Web of Science, and CINAHL and hand-searched selected health professions' education journals. The search strategy yielded a total of 5,017 articles, of which 97 were included in the final review. Four major themes were identified: "Learners' interactions with uncertainty"; "Factors that influence learner experiences"; "Educational outcomes"; and, "Teaching and learning approaches". Our findings highlight that uncertainty is a ubiquitous concern in health professions' education, with students experiencing different forms of uncertainty at many stages of their training. These experiences are influenced by both individual and system-related factors. Formal teaching strategies that directly support learning around uncertainty were infrequent, and included arts-based teaching, and clinical case presentations. Students also met with uncertainty indirectly through problem-based learning, clinical teaching, humanities teaching, simulation, team-based learning, small group learning, tactical games, online discussion of anatomy topics, and virtual patients. Reflection and reflective practice are also mentioned as strategies within the literature.