Strengths and limitation
This study can be considered as the first national study in Iran to evaluate the cultural competence of nurse educators and the effectiveness a training program designed to enhance their cultural competence. The study provides insight into the cultural competence level of nurse educators and offers suggestions for nursing education to promote cultural competence. In addition, our experiences in implementing the virtual training can be beneficial for developing future programs aimed at fostering cultural competence of the nurse educators in nursing schools. The virtual training program (offline and online combination) was well-received by busy nurse educators who had various tasks to attend to.Despite the valuable insights gained from this study, several limitations must be addressed. The results of this study were limited to nursing schools affiliated with medical universities of Kerman province in southeastern Iran. Moreover, the effectiveness of the training program was evaluated based on a self-assessment tool and one month after the training program. This might not give a real picture of nurse educators’ cultural competence. Future studies are needed with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up periods to assess the generalizability of findings to academic nurse educators in different settings.