Transcultural Nursing And Its Relationship With Cultural Competence

“Health is influenced by culture and beliefs” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). In order for the nurse to properly care for the patient, she must know and understand the patient’s culture. “Cultural care is a comprehensive model that includes the assessment of a client’s cultural needs, beliefs, and health care practices” (NRS-429V, 2011, p. 1). It is not enough to just know where the patient lives or where he came from. The nurse must embrace the concept of cultural competence and cultural awareness. This requires not only the awareness of the cultural beliefs and values of their patients, but also

Theories of transcultural nursing with established clinical approaches to clients were founded in the mid-1960s and are an essential aspect of healthcare today. The ever-increasing multicultural population in the United States poses a significant challenge to nurses providing individualized and holistic care to their patients. Accurate assessments identify factors that define transcultural nursing and analyze methods to promote culturally competent nursing care.” (Maier-Lorentz, 2008)

Leininger (1988) defined nursing as a transcultural phenomenon requiring knowledge of different cultures to provide care that is congruent with the clients’ life ways, social structure, and environmental context. This definition from the founder of transcultural care would support applying a cultural sensitive nursing care in the clinical setting, and highly linked to her definition of transcultural nursing as a legitimate and formal area of study focused on culturally based care beliefs, values, and practices to help cultures or subcultures maintain or regain their health (wellbeing) and face disabilities or death in culturally congruent and beneficial caring ways (Leininger, 1970, 1978, 1995). Moreover Leininger summarized the process of applying transcultural care as providing care that fits with cultural beliefs and life ways. From a professional perspective, it refers to the use of emic (local cultural knowledge and life ways) in meaningful and tailored ways that fit with etic (largely professional outsiders’ knowledge), in other words care should be individualized according to patient’s culture to promote holistic and effective nursing care.

Health in all cultures is an important aspect of life. A person’s cultural background, religion and/or beliefs, greatly influences a person’s health and their response to medical care (Spector, 2004). These diverse cultures guide decisions made in daily life; what food eaten, living arrangements made, medications taken and medical advice listened to. A nurse must be knowledgeable and respectful of these diverse cultures and understand their importance when providing care. This understanding helps to build a strong nurse/patient relationship, increasing patient compliance, which ensures positive outcomes are met. Patients who are satisfied

The practice of nursing in today’s multicultural societies calls for nurses to identify and meet the cultural needs of diverse groups of people; to understand the social and cultural reality of the client, family, and community; to develop expertise in the implementation of culturally acceptable strategies for the provision of nursing care, and to identify and use appropriate resources for health teaching that is acceptable to the client. Undeniably, this cultural diversity necessitates that the care provided be compatible with the needs of the culturally diverse population. Madeleine Leininger is recognized worldwide as the founder of transcultural nursing,

The term culture is defined as “the thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups” (Potter & Perry, 2013). With the increase of culturally diverse populations in the United States, it is important for nurses to practice cultural competence. Cultural competence is the ability to acquire specific behaviors, skills, attitudes, and policies in a system that permits “effective work in a cross-cultural setting” (OMH, 2013). Being culturally competent is essential because nurses who acknowledges and respects a patient’s health beliefs and practices are more likely to have positive health outcomes (OMH, 2012). Every culture has certain views and attitudes concerning

Cultural competence can be defined as using the ability of one’s awareness, attitude, knowledge and skill to effectively interact with a patient’s many cultural differences. Madeline Leininger, a pioneer on transcultural nursing describes it this way; “a formal area of study and practice focused on comparative human-care differences and similarities of the beliefs, values and patterned lifeways of cultures to provide culturally congruent, meaningful, and beneficial health care to people” (Barker, 2009, p. 498). The importance of cultural diversity in healthcare allows for the delivery of appropriate cultural autonomy. Showing respect for others will lead to trust between nurse and

The nursing profession is known for being a caring and compassionate career path that is loving and accepting of all individuals. The traits of many of us are based on our cultural background and therefore it is important to be culturally aware of different traditions and preferences pertaining to cultures that we directly interact with. Both taking into consideration the patient’s culture and recognizing the impact of one’s own personal beliefs are competencies that a nurse should demonstrate and are listed under the first standard of practice according to the American Nurses Association (ANA, 2015).

To be a successful culturally competent nurse, nurses should assume attitudes to promote transcultural care. Nurses need to be aware of their patient’s cultural differences - taking time to understand and value patient’s cultural needs and perspectives. Nurses should show respect and concern for patients. Nurses should also be empathic with their patients.

Transcultural nursing approach is to identify patient’s cultural needs, respect for cultural beliefs and practices, equal access to treatment and communication needs. From this article its clear that language barrier affected all aspects of care to this group. It's crucial to learn about the background of a particular culture to deliver culturally sensitive care. The first step in overcoming cultural diversity is the awareness of stereotypes and prejudice's and the next step is learning how other people communicate. The rapport between patient and health care team is often strained by mutual cultural misunderstanding as well as communicative and linguistic hardship. What could be accepted to some cultures may be odd to others.

The development of the Giger and Davidhizar Transcultural Assessment Model (GDTAM) came about because of nursing students’ need to provide culturally diverse care for patients. The model acknowledges that each culture is individually unique and assesses them according to six phenomena: communication, space, social organization, time, environmental control, and biological variations. In this model “nurses must use transcultural nursing knowledge as a skill and an art to provide care to diverse populations in a culturally appropriate and competent manner” (Sagar, 2012, p. 57). It goes on to discuss how the model sees cultural competence as “a dynamic process implemented by an individual or health care agency by using significant interventions based on the client’s ‘cultural

However, with the many different cultural backgrounds you must be culturally sensitive and change your plan of care to meet your patients needs. This book stressed the importance of educating nurses early in the classroom setting. The Transcultural nursing society, established in 1974, began implementing ethnic, culture and diversity patient care teaching in academic curriculum for nursing students. Today the education of nursing students in this field has allowed nurses to have a deeper appreciation and understanding of patients. They are able to understand and value the importance of cultural sensitivity and appropriate individualized clinical approaches.(pp 2)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the eight reasons why transcultural nursing (TCN) is a necessary specialty, according to Dr. Madeleine Leininger. Dr. Madeleine Leininger was a pioneer in this field of nursing. I will define the meaning of cultural diversity and relate it to nursing practice. I will explain three ways that I provide culturally sensitive care to my patients. I work in an outpatient obstetrics and gynecology office, where we see many different cultures.

Transcultural nursing is a critical component of the nursing profession in an ever-changing culturally diverse world. The patient’s social and cultural dissimilarities are important for the nurse to recognize and acknowledge. This will help to prevent the imposition of the nurse’s beliefs onto the patient. The Japanese culture beliefs are incommensurable to American cultural beliefs in how they approach the process of labor and delivery. Nursing interventions should therefore be reflective and comprehensible to that of the Japanese cultural beliefs.

Madeleine Leininger was born July 13, 1925 in Sutton, Nebraska. She is known for developing the Transcultural Nursing Theory also known as the “Culture Care Theory”.. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Human Sciences and Doctor of Science. She was also a Registered Nurse and Certified Transcultural Nurse. Although Leininger developed transcultural nursing theory in 1950’s, it wasn’t published until four decades later in Leininger’s Culture Care Diversity and Universality (Petiprin, 2014). Leininger recognized that there was an absence of cultural care knowledge while providing patient care. Therefore, purpose of Transcultural Nursing Theory is to help nurses take in consideration the patient’s culture and cultural background when determining how to care for the patient (Petiprin, 2014). It also helps nurses to become more understanding and respectful when it comes to diversity in culture and strengthen nurse-patient relationship. Madeleine Leininger’s Transcultural theory is now incorporated into nursing education to help improve health outcomes by knowing who our patients are as a whole. By doing this we see patients as a whole, and not just viewing them simply a set of symptoms or an illness (Petiprin, 2014). Nurses can integrate patient’s cultural background with the steps of the nursing process,