Introduction. Contemporary cultural competences and cultural intelligence are essential in the context of international interactions in science, education, cross-border cooperation, increasing opportunities and changing employment patterns in the labor market, refugee management, diversity management in international project teams, war missions, and medical tourism. Noteworthy are the economic, political, social, technological, generational changes in the world. In Poland, there are more and more foreigners who become clients of Polish health care. Aim. Presentation of the components of cultural competences and cultural intelligence of health care providers, mainly nurses, and their role. This article is the result of a critical analysis of secondary sources in the literature of the subject, i.e. book and article publications, and the author’s own experiences. Results. Cultural competence is the awareness of one’s own system of values and the resulting limitations, the patient’s perspective, the existence of different perspectives, the hierarchy of values, norms and patterns of behavior; knowledge – providing information that is culturally specific; skills – covering multicultural intervention strategies. Cultural intelligence is a specific form of intelligence, focused on the individual’s ability to understand, correctly reason, function, manage, deal with situations that are characteristic of cultural diversity. It consists of four components: cognitive, metaphorical, motivational, and behavioral. Conclusions. Having cultural competence in nursing is necessary to reduce the potential negative effects of cultural differences in artefacts, values, norms, behaviors. Developing and improving cultural intelligence in nursing is an indispensable, time-stretching, difficult but rewarding process that facilitates breaking stereotypes that hinder relations between representatives of different cultures.

Key words: cultural intelligence, cultural competence, nursing.