An urgent need to improve Swedish primary child health-care nurses' cultural competence was revealed by previous research among nurses working in, and immigrant parents visiting, primary child health-care services. The aim of this study was to evaluate the extent to which specific training affected how nurses rated their own cultural competence, difficulties, and concerns and to study how the nurses evaluated the training. Conducted as a randomized controlled trial, the effects on a study sample of 51 nurses were assessed by questionnaires in a pre- and post-study design. The findings indicated that the 3 days of training were appreciated by the nurses and had some effects on their cultural competence, difficulties, and concerns. The training might have had positive effects on the nurses' working conditions as they rated it to have an impact on their ability to cope with the demands of their work activities in the health services. These effects are presumed to contribute to an improved quality of the health services, with a reduction in the risk for health-care disparities among children of immigrant parents. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Primary child health-care services Randomized controlled trial Study-specific training intervention Cultural competence Nurses

education controlled clinical trial clinical trial nonparametric test Statistics, Nonparametric human controlled study randomized controlled trial nursing staff Cultural Competency cultural competence Sweden Humans chi square distribution male Chi-Square Distribution female Child Welfare Article in service training Analysis of Variance Inservice Training Educational Measurement Child