Research Trends in Multicultural Education Programs for Nursing Students in South Korea

Objectives The purpose of this study is to identify effective multicultural education program contents, methods and strategies by analyzing research trends on multicultural education programs applied for nursing students in South Korea. Methods The literature was searched in five Korean electronic journal databases (RISS, DBpia, KISS, National Library of Korea, NDSL). The search was conducted by combining (‘multicultural education’ OR ‘multicultural education programme’) AND (‘nursing students’ OR ‘nursing students’ OR ‘student nurses’) without limiting the year of publication. As a result, a total of 399 articles were retrieved, and 21 articles that met the selection criteria were analyzed. Results The articles analyzed were 21 journal articles, including 1 (4.8%) from Science Citation Expanded (SCIE), 17 (80.9%) from Korean Citation Index (KCI), and 3 (14.3%) from dissertations. The composition of multicultural education programs varied according to their purpose, and the main variables and application effects of multicultural education programs showed that the application effects of multicultural education programs had positive effects on cultural competence, empathy, self-efficacy, multicultural acceptance, multicultural competence, multicultural attitudes, international health core competencies, multicultural efficacy, multicultural awareness, and intercultural sensitivity. Conclusions This study is significant in that it analyzed the research trends of multicultural education programs for nursing students in Korea, identified the characteristics, main variables, and application effects of the programs, and suggested directions for future multicultural education programes for nursing students.