Kontakt 2012, 14(3):250-260 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2012.028

Cultural shock of Czech healthcare professionals in Islamic countriesNursing

Hana Lukšová^1,*, Jana Kutnohorská², Yvetta Vrublová¹

¹ Lékařská fakulta Ostravské univerzity v Ostravě, Ústav ošetřovatelství a porodní asistence

² Institut zdravotnických studií, Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně

The cultural dialogue, which is in European countries currently prevalently focused on a dialogue with the Muslim culture, occurs in an interaction with experiencing a cultural shock. People entering a new environment (different population, climate, customs, tradition, religion, etc.) can experience a cultural shock - a process of the adaptation to changes. It consists of several stages and takes individually different periods of time, exerts different degrees of intensity and is affected by many factors.
The target of the research was to bring a contribution to knowledge of effects of the foreign cultural environment on 15 Czech healthcare professionals. These were 10 general nurses working in Saudi Arabia and five healthcare professionals - members of the Czech Army participating in a mission to Afghanistan. Information about the cultural shock impacts was accumulated with the use of semi-structured interviews.
Cultural differences together with climate conditions and language barrier affected the adaptation process in the environment in terms of the time period necessary and capability of adaptation in the individuals. After the adaptation process, a considerable proportion of the Czech healthcare professionals negatively assessed the culture. The cultural shock stages take individually different periods of time and are affected by the total time of the stay, except for the honeymoon stage, which takes 2.5 weeks on average. Friends and working activity were particularly helpful at the recovery stage. In terms of the Czech culture, the healthcare professionals were mainly missing the freedom, Czech cuisine and Czech landscape. In the course of the cultural shock, the Czech healthcare professionals suffered form psychosomatic problems and most of them did not experience any rebound cultural shock.
The results of the research present information about the nature of still known stages of the cultural shock and about their dependence on the length of the stay and personality profile of the respondents.

Keywords: cultural shock; culture; adaptation; nursing; healthcare professionals

Received: December 9, 2011; Accepted: June 5, 2012; Published: September 27, 2012  Show citation