Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Background Cultural competence is a critical quality imperative in contemporary nursing practice, particularly in perioperative settings where surgery intersects with patients' cultural frameworks of meaning. Despite growing evidence on cultural competence in nursing globally, a significant gap exists in evidence from perioperative and surgical nursing contexts, and from sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Objective This scoping review aimed to systematically map the breadth, nature, and distribution of existing evidence on cultural competence in nursing; to critically appraise its theoretical and methodological characteristics; and to identify conceptual, empirical, and geographical gaps relevant to perioperative nursing practice in Ghana. Methods A scoping review was conducted following the methodological framework of Arksey and O'Malley (2005) as refined by Levac et al. (2010), and updated guidance from Peters et al. (2020). The population-concept-context (PCC) framework guided the search. Searches were conducted across five sources (PubMed, PubMed Central, BASE, DOAJ, and Google Scholar) using terms related to cultural competence, perioperative nursing, and patient-centred care. Thirty peer-reviewed articles published between January 2020 and March 2026 were included and synthesised thematically. Results The 30 included studies spanned 16 countries across five continents. Cross-sectional survey designs predominated (n = 18). Nurses generally reported moderate levels of cultural competence, with cultural awareness consistently the strongest and cultural encounters consistently the weakest domain. Patient perspectives were absent or indirect in 28 of 30 studies. Five critical gaps were identified: the absence of perioperative-specific evidence, systematic exclusion of patient voices, underrepresentation of Africa and Ghana, persistent weakness of the cultural encounters domain, and inadequate examination of systemic barriers in Ghanaian perioperative nursing. Conclusion This review establishes the empirical and conceptual rationale for investigating cultural competence specifically within Ghanaian perioperative nursing. The findings call for context-specific, patient-centred, and multi-level interventions to bridge the gap between cultural awareness and culturally competent practice in surgical care settings.</p>