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Objective: Patient education is an important part of nurses' roles; however the inconsistent quality of communication skills, including those of registered nurses (RNs) from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, risk patient safety. Empowerment in patient education has been found to influence patients' self-efficacy and participation in decision-making. Discourse analysis of a whole interaction is used in this paper to trace the consequences of patient education where empowering discourse is displayed by an RN from a CALD background.Methods: Ethnographic techniques of participant observation and audio recordings of naturally occurring interactions between nurses from CALD backgrounds and their patients were conducted and analysed using interactional sociolinguistic (IS) and theme oriented discourse analytic approaches.Results: The interactional consequences of the nurse's empowering approach are readily observable in the data. The RN addresses the patient's education needs through a respectful encounter that illustrates the patient's active involvement.Conclusion: Examining the interactional consequences of empowering discourse demonstrates its effectiveness, and illustrates how empowering behaviour can be integrated into patient education, thus offering an alternative to traditional approaches.Practical Implications: Greater awareness of how to use empowering discourse will offer an alternative and consistent approach that enables nurses to facilitate patient-centred education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of culture and multiculture are broad and deeply embedded in every day talk and practices. In an increasingly globalised world, how we understand and work with these terms affects how parents and their families experience health care services and the support intended by health care professionals. This is particularly important for parents who are new to Australia. In this paper we report on findings from an ethnographic study undertaken across two community child and family health nursing sites in South Australia. Using examples, we explore how child and family health nurses appear to understand and use constructs of culture and multiculture during everyday, intercultural communication with parents who are new to Australia and Australian health services. By analysing these understandings through postcolonial and feminist theories we found pervading evidence that neo-colonial constructs of a white western monoculture shaped intercultural communication practice. We conclude by reflecting on how these constructs might be addressed to improve intercultural communication in child and family health settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]