Background: In today's society, many people will migrate between different countries. A major challenge, for nurses, is to provide good and equal care to all patients, as well as being able to communicate with all patients in the healthcare. Communication is an important component of nursing. Cultural competence is also relevant in our multi-ethnic society when the nurse works in healthcare.
Aim: The aim of this literature review was to investigate how nurses experience caring for patients in hospital care, when there are language barriers.
Method: The results of the literature review are based on qualitative studies found in Cinahl and PubMed databases. These databases were used because the studies in those databases mainly fokuses on nursing. The quality review was based on SBU's quality review template and the analysis was based on Friberg's (2017) analysis method.
Results: The results are based upon ten qualitative studies, with focus on language barriers. The results were divided into three categories: The impact of language barriers in nursing, interpreters and the importance of cultural competence. Then the categories were divided into different sub-categories.
Conclusion: Language barriers were a complicating aspect when providing good nursing care, although the nurses used different strategies to deal with the language barriers. One strategy was the use of interpreters.