The global perspective of nursing students in relation to college peers.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the present study was to assess the nursing students' global perspectives and compare it to a nationally normed reference group. BACKGROUND: An individual's global perspective impacts the extent to which the person perceives and knows the people and cultures within the world. Nursing care is expected to take a holistic perspective in providing care and respond in culturally appropriate ways to a diverse population through understanding the impact of cultural influences. METHODS: Participant nursing students completed the Global Perspective Inventory survey and information about their current global perspective taking and their perceptions of curricular and co-curricular experiences was collected and analyzed. RESULTS: Compared to the nationally normed reference group, nursing students expressed statistically significant lower intrapersonal affect average score.  Although higher average scores were detected in most of the other scales, differences were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: A global perspective approach to intercultural nursing education is an area that needs to be further developed and different options are to be examined.