Nursing Communication Quality, Culturally Sensitive Communication, and Treatment Satisfaction among Patients: A Cross-Sectional Survey at an International Medical Centre
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62177/apjcmr.v2i5.1751Keywords:
Nursing Communication Quality, Culturally Sensitive Communication, Patient Trust, Language Concordance, Treatment SatisfactionAbstract
This study aimed to examine the effects of Nursing Communication Quality (NCQ) and Culturally Sensitive Communication (CSC) on Treatment Satisfaction (TS) among patients in an international medical centre, with particular attention to the mediating role of Patient Trust (PT) and the moderating role of Language Concordance (LC). A convenience sample of 453 patients was recruited from the international medical centre of a tertiary Grade A hospital in Guangzhou between March and May 2026. The results showed that NCQ (β = 0.292) and CSC (β = 0.168) positively predicted PT, while PT positively predicted TS (β = 0.388). PT partially mediated the relationship between NCQ and TS (indirect effect = 0.128, 95% CI [0.086, 0.175]) and fully mediated the relationship between CSC and TS (indirect effect = 0.113, 95% CI [0.075, 0.156]). LC directly predicted TS (β = 0.167) and positively moderated the effect of NCQ on PT (B = 0.196). These findings indicate that the ‘communication–trust–satisfaction’ mechanism is applicable to international healthcare settings, with CSC exerting its effect on TS fully through PT and LC functioning as a boundary condition. Healthcare organisations should strengthen cross-cultural communication training, enhance multilingual resource provision, and implement trust-oriented quality monitoring.
Downloads
References
Toni, M., Jithina, K. K., & Thomas, K. V. (2024). Antecedents of patient satisfaction in the medical tourism sector: a review. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 7(4), 2273-2286.
Kumar, S. S., Sarkar, S., Kumar, V., & Bhattacharjee, B. (2025). An examination of influencing factors on service experiences to improve healthcare quality in medical tourism. The TQM Journal. Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-07-2024-0248
Li, X., Hyun, S. S., & Kim, H. S. (2024). Perception of medical practitioners on the importance of medical tourism services. International Journal of Tourism Research, 26(1), e2617.
Kozan, A., Siddaiah, A., & Dasgupta, S. (2026). Lost in translation: understanding patient and healthcare worker experiences and perceived effects of linguistic barriers to healthcare access in multilingual populations in Karnataka, India. Frontiers in Communication, 11, 1848819.
Fernández-Ortega, M. A., Juárez-Flores, A., Olaiz-Fernández, G. A., Muñiz-Salinas, D. A., & Rodríguez-Mendoza, O. (2023). Patient dissatisfaction associated with physician-patient linguistic discordance in California clinics: an analytical cross-sectional study. BMC Health Services Research, 23(1), 189.
Wiles, I., Tariq, A., Karasneh, G., Summerville, D., Tovar, D. E., & Woltenberg, L. N. (2023). The effects of interpreter utilization on patient outcomes: a contemporary literature review. Education in the Health Professions, 6(2), 49-60.
Akthar, N., Nayak, S., & Pai, Y. (2023). Determinants of patient satisfaction in Asia: Evidence from systematic review of literature. Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health, 23, 101393.
Guo, S., Chang, Y., Chang, H., He, X., Zhang, Q., Song, B., & Liu, Y. (2023). Patient satisfaction with nurses' care is positively related to the nurse–patient relationship in Chinese hospitals: A multicentre study. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 1109313.
Keshtkar, L., Madigan, C. D., Ward, A., Ahmed, S., Tanna, V., Rahman, I., ... & Howick, J. (2024). The effect of practitioner empathy on patient satisfaction: a systematic review of randomized trials. Annals of Internal Medicine, 177(2), 196-209.
Li, T.,Zheng, S., Han, M., & Wu, M. (2025). Coping strategies for nurse burnout:Combination of psychological counselling and institutional safeguards. International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2(4), 181–194. https://doi.org/10.70693/itphss.v2i4.321
Arruzza, E., & Chau, M. (2021). The effectiveness of cultural competence education in enhancing knowledge acquisition, performance, attitudes, and student satisfaction among undergraduate health science students: a scoping review. Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions, 18.
Saquing, J. B., & Ernest, S. (2025). Cultural Competence in Nursing and Its Effect on Patient Satisfaction: Aligned with SDG 2 and SDG 3. Vascular and Endovascular Review, 8(3s), 355-364.
Ku, L., & Vichare, A. (2023). The Association of Racial and Ethnic Concordance in Primary Care with Patient Satisfaction and Experience of Care: Ku and Vichare. Journal of general internal medicine, 38(3), 727-732.
Reaume, M., Labossière, M. N., Batista, R., Van Haute, S., Tangri, N., Rigatto, C., ... & Lix, L. M. (2025). Patient-physician language concordance and cardiovascular outcomes among patients with hypertension. JAMA Network Open, 8(2), e2460551.
Peplau, H. E. (1997). Peplau's theory of interpersonal relations. Nursing science quarterly, 10(4), 162-167.
Parasuraman, A. B. L. L., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. 1988, 64(1), 12-40.
Joo, Y., Jang, Y., Park, C. G., & Yang, Y. L. (2024). Development and validation of a patient-centered communication scale for nurses. BMC nursing, 23(1), 550.
Bahari, Z., Vosoghi, N., Ramazanzadeh, N., Moshfeghi, S., & Aghamohammadi, M. (2024). Patient trust in nurses: exploring the relationship with care quality and communication skills in emergency departments. BMC nursing, 23(1), 595.
Zhang, J., Xu, F., Wu, J., Du, J., Ding, J., Zhuang, P., & Qing, W. (2025). The effect of the nurse-patient relationship on the job performance of nurses in tertiary public hospitals in China: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Health Services Research, 25(1), 812.
Çınar, D., Olgun, N., & Koyuncu, A. (2022). Investigation of the cultural competence levels of diabetes nurses. Clinical and Experimental Health Sciences, 12(4), 805-811.
Cavite, F. A. (2025). Nursing in a multicultural world: Cultural competence and sensitivity as ethical imperatives. Annals of Tropical Research, 47(2), 366-372.
Roncoroni, J., Frank, M., Hudson, A., Whitaker, S., Edelman, A., Garcia, P., ... & Ratchford, J. (2022). Latinx patients’ perceptions of culturally sensitive health care and their association with patient satisfaction, patient-provider communication, and therapeutic alliance. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 9(2), 620-629.
Rahardjo, R. K., Sari, D. M. F. P., Darma, G. S., & Korry, P. D. P. (2025). Understanding Patient Satisfaction Using SERVQUAL-Kano: The Moderating Role of Patient Trust and the Mediating Role of Waiting Time Tolerance. Petra International Journal of Business Studies, 8(2), 144-156.
Hussain, A., Kanwel, S., Khan, S., Alonazi, W. B., Malik, A., & Khan, A. A. (2025). Antecedents of patient loyalty: Exploring mediating and moderating paradigms in public hospitals. Patient preference and adherence, 527-542.
Çoşkun Palaz, S., & Kayacan, S. (2023). The relationship between the level of trust in nurses and nursing care quality perceptions of patients treated for Covid‐19. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 37(2), 364-372.
İspir Demir, Ö., Yıldırım, A., Sönmez, B., & Duygulu, S. (2023). Relationship between structural empowerment and nurse and patient-reported outcomes: the mediating role of control over nursing practices. Western journal of nursing research, 45(7), 634-645.
Daggett, A., Abdollahi, S., Hashemzadeh, M., & Daggett, A. E. (2023). The effect of language concordance on health care relationship trust score. Cureus, 15(5).
Au, M., Zhou, M. M., Lee, M. S., & An, J. (2026). Race, ethnicity, and language concordance between patients and physicians and atrial fibrillation DOAC treatment. JAMA Network Open, 9(9), e2629363.
Bregio, C., Finik, J., Baird, M., Ortega, P., Roter, D., Karliner, L., & Diamond, L. C. (2022). Exploring the impact of language concordance on cancer communication. JCO Oncology Practice, 18(11), e1885-e1898.
Anderson, L. A., & Dedrick, R. F. (1990). Development of the Trust in Physician scale: a measure to assess interpersonal trust in patient-physician relationships. Psychological reports, 67(3_suppl), 1091-1100.
Ware, J. E., & Hays, R. D. (1988). Methods for measuring patient satisfaction with specific medical encounters. Medical care, 26(4), 393-402.
Zheng, S., & Han, M. (2024). The impact of AI enablement on students’ personalized learning and countermeasures—A dialectical approach to thinking. Journal of Infrastructure, Policy and Development, 8(14), 10274. https://doi.org/10.24294/jipd10274
Jonkisz, A., Karniej, P., & Krasowska, D. (2022). The servqual method as an assessment tool of the quality of medical services in selected Asian countries. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(13), 7831.
AlOmari, F. (2021). Measuring gaps in healthcare quality using SERVQUAL model: challenges and opportunities in developing countries. Measuring Business Excellence, 25(4), 407-420.
Erkayiran, O., & Aslan, R. (2025). Development and psychometric validation of the nurse-patient therapeutic interaction scale (NuPTIS). Nurse Education in Practice, 104478.
Friedel, A. L., Siegel, S., Kirstein, C. F., Gerigk, M., Bingel, U., Diehl, A., ... & Kreitschmann-Andermahr, I. (2023, March). Measuring patient experience and patient satisfaction—how are we doing it and why does it matter? A comparison of European and US American approaches. In Healthcare (Vol. 11, No. 6, p. 797). MDPI.
Zheng, S. (2026). Digital Innovative Collaboration in Educational Management: A Mediated Model of Knowledge Sharing Behavior and Digital Teaching Engagement. Sage Open, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440261491444
Downloads
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Enjin Hu, Yun Huang, Tong Liu, Meijuan Wu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
DATE
Accepted: 2026-10-07
Published: 2026-10-20








