Cultural competence in mental health nursing: validity and internal consistency of the Portuguese version of the multicultural mental health awareness scale—MMHAS

摘要

BackgroundCultural competence is an essential component in rendering effective and culturally responsive services to culturally and ethnically diverse clients. Still, great difficulty exists in assessing the cultural competence of mental health nurses. There are no Portuguese validated measurement instruments to assess cultural competence in mental health nurses. This paper reports a study testing the reliability and validity of the Portuguese version of the Multicultural Mental Health Awareness Scale–MMHAS in a sample of Portuguese nurses.