Student nurses conceptualized a cross-cultural care
encounter as one in which the patient came from a non-
Swedish background. This observation is interesting on
two accounts. First it suggests that student nurses have a
limited interpretation of culture in terms of their interactions
with people who they consider to be from a different
culture to their own. Consistent with the literature,
culture is conceived within the context of country of origin
rather than a broader interpretation to include, for
example, subgroups such as homeless people (1, 33, 34).
Second, cross-cultural care encounters are viewed as those
which involve interactions with patients from an immigrant
background. Nurses who were from an immigrant
background themselves all provided examples of crosscultural
care encounters that involved patients from a
different immigrant background rather than Swedish
patients. This may be due to the emphasis student nurses
placed on the importance of a shared spoken language.
Immigrant student nurses spoke Swedish and therefore did
not appear to view their encounters with Swedish patients
as cross-cultural. It implies that in subscribing to the values
of the Swedish healthcare system immigrant nurses share
similar values and beliefs to their Swedish colleagues and
patients, a view supported by studies of the experiences of
immigrant nurses working in the UK (35, 36).