Background

Healthcare professionals'“cultural prejudices” toward individuals' cultural beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions affect the care they provide. Their awareness of their bias is closely associated with the quality of healthcare provided.

Purpose

This study was designed to assess nurses' perceptions regarding providing care to Syrian refugee patients using metaphors and to evaluate their views based on these metaphors.

Methods

The participants in this qualitative study consisted of 80 nurses who worked in Level 1 and Level 2 health institutions. Data were collected using an interview form prepared by the researchers. The form included descriptive characteristics of the nurses and two expressions used to determine the nurses' opinions on providing care for Syrian refugee patients. The nurses were given an incomplete sentence, which was “Providing care for a Syrian refugee patient… because…,” and were asked to complete the blanks. The data were analyzed using the content analysis method.

Results

On the basis of “providing care for Syrian refugee patients,” four categories of metaphors were determined: occupational awareness, health promotion, a difficult process/resistance, and providing service in vain. The participants generated 50 metaphors, with “humanity,”“a baby/little child,” and “a barrier” as the three most used metaphors, belonging to the “occupational awareness” and “a difficult process/resistance” categories, respectively.