Transforming ethnocentricity in nursing: a culturally relevant experience of reciprocal visits between Malta and the Midwest.

Despite efforts by the nursing profession to enhance culture competence among nurses, some limitations in understanding the potential lack of culture competence in the patient remain. Nurses are often not aware of their own cultural bias from the patient's perspective (ethnocentricity) and fail to understand that many patients are trying to function in unfamiliar social and medical cultures simultaneously. This article reviews the experiences of student nurses from Malta and the Midwestern United States who were given the opportunity to explore their cultural biases by visiting the healthcare institutions of their respective countries.