Madeleine Leininger Transcultural nursing theory 1995 (USA)

Madeleine Leininger Transcultural nursing theory 1995 (USA)

 
Madeleine Leininger was born in 1925, received her basic nursing education from St. Anthony’s School of Nursing, Colorado, Master of Science in mental health nursing from the Catholic University of America and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Washington. She is the founder of transcultural nursing society and the journal of transcultural nursing. She has conducted many projects published extensively about transcultural nursing and human care theory worldwide.

Madeleine Leininger first used the terms such as transcultural nursing, ethno nursing and cross cultural nursing. In 2006, Madeleine Leininger defined trans cultural nursing (rather than cross cultural) as “a discipline of study and practice focuses on comparative culture care differences and similarities among and between cultures in order to assist human beings to attain and maintain meaningful and therapeutic health care practices that are culturally based”. The ethno nursing is a rigorous, systematic and in-depth method for studying multiple cultures and care factors with in familiar environment of people and to focus on the interrelationship of care and culture to arrive at the goal of culturally congruent care services. 

In 1985, Madeleine Leininger published her work on a theory. She defined ‘culture’ is the learned, shared and transmitted value, beliefs, norms and life ways of a particular group that guides thinking, decisions and actions in patterned ways. A subculture is a group with in the culture that differs from main culture. Culture care is the synthesized and culturally constituted assistive, supportive, facilitative caring acts towards self and others focused on evident or anticipated needs for the client’s health or well being or to face disabilities, death or other human condition. She viewed the care into two types: emic (general) and etic (professional) care. Emic care is a folk care, culturally learned and transmitted based on folk knowledge and skills. Etic care is professional care, formally learned through institutions include nursing. 

Cultural and socio structural factors include religion, kinship, politics, legal issues, education, economics, technology, philosophy of life and cultural beliefs. Culturally congruent care is defined as culturally based care knowledge, acts and decisions used in sensitive and knowledgeable ways to appropriately and meaningfully fit the cultural values, beliefs, life ways of clients for their health and well being or to prevent illness, disabilities or death. Cultural care diversity indicates the difference among human beings with respect to cultural care meanings, patterns, values, life ways and symbols related to providing beneficial care to clients of a designated culture. Cultural care universality indicates commonly shared cultural care phenomena features of human beings or a group with recurrent meaning, pattern, life ways that serve as a guide for care givers to provide assistive, supportive, facilitative or enabling people care for healthy outcome. 

She defined nursing as a learned, humanistic and scientific profession and discipline focused on human care phenomena and caring activities in order to assist, support and facilitate or enable individuals or groups to maintain their health or well being is culturally meaningful and beneficial ways or to help individual face handicaps or death.
Professional nursing care is defined as the formal and cognitively learned professional care knowledge and practice skills, obtained through educational institutions that are expected to provide assistive, supportive, enabling or facilitative acts to or for another individual or groups in order to improve human health well being. 

Madeleine Leininger (2002) discusses the concepts related to cultural care.

• Culture specific care- very specific to client’s needs
• Generalized culture care- commonly shared professional nursing care techniques that are beneficial to all
• Culture care conflict- signs of distress that fail to meet a client’s cultural expectations
• Culture care clashes- situation that arises problem
• Culture exports- sending of ideas to another culture
• Cultural imports- receiving of ideas from another culture
• Cultural space- the variation of cultures in the use of interpersonal distance to others
• Culture time- the dominant orientation of an individual to different parts, present and future periods that guides one’s thinking actions
• Culture care therapy- qualified transcultural nurses who offer assistive, supportive and facilitative healing reflections and practices to individuals who have experienced cultural pain, offenses and other concerns.

Madeleine Leininger’s short culturalogical assessment guide

• Phase 1- Record observation of what you see, hear or experience with clients.
• Phase 2- Listen to and learn from the client about cultural values.
• Phase 3- Identify and document recurrent client patterns and narrative stories with client meaning of what has been seen, heard and experienced.
• Phase 4- Synthesize themes and patterns of care derived from the phase 1, 2 and 3.
• Phase 5- Develop a culturally based client nurse care plan for decisions and actions for culturally congruent care.

To conclude, the theory of cultural care diversity and universality is of significance in a society that is becoming more and more aware of the cultural diversity with in the boundaries. It provides guidelines for the gathering of knowledge and a framework for making decisions about what care is needed or would he of the greatest benefit to the client.