Introduction: The ability to care for patients with the knowledge about their cultural needs is an essential part of communication skills of nurses. Cultural competence along with responsibility not only can meet the needs of hospitals, but also improve the well-being of patients and increase their satisfaction. The objective of this research was to evaluate the association between cultural competence and responsibility in nurses working in hospitals of Hamadan. Methodology: This descriptive cross-sectional research is a correlation study which carried out on 300 nurses working in hospitals affiliated to Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in 2017. The collected data in this research included demographic characteristics, employment history of nurses, responsibility level, and cultural competence of nurses. Responsibility was assessed by using the Mergler questionnaire and cultural competence was assessed by using the Molder questionnaire. The relationship between these variables and other variables were analyzed.Results: The mean score of responsibility in the nurses was found 89.3 ± 13.6 and the mean score of their cultural competence was found 196.6 ± 26.5. The cultural competence was high in 160 (53.3%) of them, moderate in 135 nurses (45%) and low in 5 (1.7%) of them. No significant correlation was found between cultural competence score and responsibility score (P-value = 0.069, r = 0.105). In addition, age, gender, education, marital status and employment history of nurses showed no significant relationship with their cultural competence (P-values <0.05).Conclusion: The level of cultural competence in the majority of nurses was moderate and high, but the level of cultural competence did not have a significant relationship with their responsibility. Given the importance of the subject of study, conducting more studies is required to clarify the relationship between these two variables.
