Cultural competence: development of a conceptual framework.

Purpose: To describe the development of a conceptual framework for cultural competence that could help and guide the training of rehabilitation practitioners, students and researchers.

Method: A systematic review of the literature yielded 259 usable documents that were further reviewed by two independent readers to identify 32 publications that described cultural competence conceptual models.

Results: After eliminating redundancy, 18 unique cultural competence models were identified. A synthesis model was first developed which included four components. After an empirical validation of the model, a new model with only three components emerged.

Conclusion: The empirically validated conceptual framework is a promising tool for training and evaluation of cultural competence.