Examining nursing students' learning through reflective analysis using Ray's Transcultural Caring Dynamics in Nursing and Health Care Theory

Abstract

Background: Critical reflection empowers nursing students understanding as they become caring health professionals. Clinical nursing staff must have cultural sensitivity and empathy to provide culturally relevant care that meets the needs of patients from diverse cultures and ethnicities. Currently, the nursing profession is facing a shortage of nurses, which challenges the quality of care in Taiwan and the global community. An important mission of education is to cultivate nursing students with the professional competence to provide appropriate care to patients and families. This study explored nursing students' reflections on the meaning of caring in professional nursing.

Method: Data were collected from the written reflections of 32 who completed their basic professional nursing courses at a Taiwanese university. A reflective thematic analysis guided by Ray's theory of Transcultural Caring Dynamics in Nursing and Health Care, highlighting the dimensions of caring, transcultural ethics, transcultural context, and universal sources (spirituality), was used to provide an understanding of how students viewed integrative patient-centred caring, and how they gained self-awareness and insights into their family relationships.

Findings: Four themes were derived from students' reflective documents. The identified themes included building a caring experience to meet individuals' physical and psychological needs; learning caring ethics by respecting individual's integrity and rights; family, school peers, and communities affecting the caring experience, and exploring teaching and learning approaches to enhance the caring experience.

Conclusions: Findings from students' reflections indicate that individual patient needs should be considered when providing appropriate nursing care. Additionally, multiple teaching-learning strategies demonstrated their effectiveness in enabling nursing students to develop self-awareness in seeking an understanding of culturally appropriate care decisions.

Keywords: Nursing students; Ray’s transcultural caring theory; Reflective thinking and analysis.

Fig. 1

An example of reflective analysis using Ray’s Transcultural Caring Dynamic in Nursing and Health Care Theory (adapted from Ray, 2016)