Understanding Leininger 's Theory Of Transcultural Nursing

“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

Care and culture are the key constructs that make up the Culture Care Theory. This theory differed from other nurses’ work or mindset because nurse leaders relied heavily up on the four metaparadigm concepts of person, environment, health, and nursing to explain nursing (McFarland and Wehbe-Alamah, 2015). Leininger realized that those four metaparadigm concepts were to limited in its scope regarding nursing and culture and care ideologies. Interestingly, care and culture were excluded from the metaparadigm. “It is not logical to use nursing to explain nursing” (McFarland and Wehbe-Alamah, 2015). That is definitely a contradiction in terms and represents scholarly research

Madeliene Leininger was one of the first people to recognize that cultural differences influence an individual’s response to health care activities and that these cultural differences also affect experiences of well-being, health, illness, disability and death. During her career, Leininger noticed eight factors occurring in the world around her that directly impacted people of different cultures. She used these factors to frame the theory of transcultural nursing, and today, they are still relevant. She observed a sharp increase in population migration between countries across the globe. She experienced people who

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

Nursing is a continually evolving discipline. Nursing theories and conceptual frameworks serve as basis for research, education, and standards of practice. Theory plays a vital role in every nurse’s practice as it aims to define, explain, and predict the phenomenon of nursing. It helps the nursing profession expand its practice, develop research studies, and enhance patient care. This paper will discusses two of the major nursing theorists and their respective works. The paper will focus on Dorothea Orem’s self-care theory and Madeleine Leininger’s theory of culture care diversity and universality. These famous nursing scholars have contributed immensely to the study of nursing and its practice.

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 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).

Cultural competence in nursing can provide a platform for nursing to understand a patient's culture and background. When a nurse takes the time to learn about a given culture

Culture competence is a quality that any nurse should have. The article that I decided to research refers to the impact that language and different cultures have on a patient’s health. It is the duty of health care professionals to attempt to learn about different cultures and to be sensitive to the way patient’s feel about their beliefs. Once the nurse understands a patient’s

In the profession of nursing, an essential aspect is the ability for a nurse to provide culturally competent care to each one of his/her patients. This requires the nurse to understand how a person’s culture can affect the way they care for them. The focus of this paper will be on a model put together to assist nurses in providing care to culturally diverse patients, specifically caring for patients a part of the Chinese culture in the children and family transition of life. The summary and application of the six phenomena in the relation to the Chinese culture followed by the nursing implications of those cultural variances are described below.

Madeleine Leininger’s cultural care theory is one of the most influential modern day theories in nursing. Leininger describes her theory as one that is cultural sensitive that is tailored to address patients of different cultures, backgrounds, or origins. Leininger develops the cultural care theory due to the fact that she believes that nurses are caring for their patients as a one hat fits all, and not taking into consideration the patient 's background or their culture.

Nowadays, nurses not only need to know how to care of their patients, but they also must be able to care of patients from other cultures with many beliefs and values. Cultural views of individual influence the patient’s perception and decision of health and health care (Creasia & Parker, 2007). In order to care for people across different languages and cultures, nurses need to develop cultural sensitivity, knowledge, and skills.

Today when people move across continents with the help of technology their culture and heritage moves along with them. Almost each and every continent is populated with people from different nations who have diverse traditions and cultures. Thus knowledge of health traditions and culture plays a vital role in nursing. People from different cultures have a unique view on health and illness. Culture-specific care is a vital skill to the modern nurse, as the United States continues to consist of many immigrants who have become assimilated into one culture. I interviewed three families of different cultures: - Indian (my culture), Hispanic and Chinese. Let us see the differences in health traditions between these cultures.

The premise of Madeleine Leininger ‘s Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality is that one must regard his or her patient both holistically and with respect to the patient’s given cultural background. Leininger aims to establish a nurse-patient relationship in which communication and collaboration are culturally congruent. Via such interactions, a nurse can hypothetically deliver individualized, culturally competent care. However, while Leininger’s theory has many benefits and clear applicability in a multicultural society, its execution may fall short due to the predominating social norms and values held by larger society.