This INE profile classifies the competences of an educator who trains nursing students to develop intercultural competence into three dimensions: The Personal, the Professional and the Pedagogical. This profile is downloadable in different languages, you find it at the bottom of this page.
The personal dimension of intercultural competence presents the aspects of intercultural competence that form the basis for both a professional interculturally competent nurse and a nurse educator training intercultural competence. In order to perform competently, this person needs to be ethnorelative, or in other words, has the ability to operate appropriately and effectively in culturally diverse situations.
The professional dimension features the additional attributes required to be an interculturally competent nurse.
This dimension is relevant, as nurse educators who train intercultural competence, need to ensure that students learn to communicate and provide effective and appropriate care adapted to the cultural background of the patient, groups or communities within their professional context. This also includes the ability to work in multicultural teams.
The pedagogical dimension describes the characteristics of a nurse educator who teaches intercultural competence. This dimension is divided into two sub-dimensions. One sub-dimension concentrates on the necessity for all nurse educators to teach students in an interculturally competent way. The second sub-dimension focuses on the competence to train and foster the development of intercultural competence of nursing students. The dimensions of this profile are intertwined and there will be some overlap; for example, the pedagogical dimension contains aspects of the professional and the personal dimensions. However, in this paper, the three dimensions are presented separately.
In addition, the competences in these dimensions have been categorized into knowledge, attitudes/values and skills required by the nurse educators. We have chosen this taxonomic approach taking into account the previous treatments of the topic by the OECD Global Competence Framework (2018) and the WHO Nurse Educator Core Competencies (2016). We expect this common description will facilitate the development of educational programs and facilitate the creation of assessment tools and methods.
