Major Concepts of the Transcultural Nursing
Theory
The following are the major concepts and their definitions in Madeleine
Leininger’s Transcultural Nursing Theory.
Transcultural Nursing
Transcultural nursing is defined as a learned subfield or branch of nursing that
focuses upon the comparative study and analysis of cultures concerning nursing
and health-illness caring practices, beliefs, and values to provide meaningful and
efficacious nursing care services to their cultural values and health-illness context.
Ethnonursing
This is the study of nursing care beliefs, values, and practices as cognitively
perceived and known by a designated culture through their direct experience,
beliefs, and value system (Leininger, 1979).
Nursing
Nursing is defined as a learned humanistic and scientific profession and discipline
which is focused on human care phenomena and activities to assist, support,
facilitate, or enable individuals or groups to maintain or regain their well-being
(or health) in culturally meaningful and beneficial ways, or to help people face
handicaps or death.
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Professional Nursing Care (Caring)
Professional nursing care (caring) is defined as formal and cognitively learned
professional care knowledge and practice skills obtained through educational
institutions that are used to provide assistive, supportive, enabling, or facilitative
acts to or for another individual or group to improve a human health condition
(or well-being), disability, lifeway, or to work with dying clients.
Cultural Congruent (Nursing) Care
Cultural congruent (nursing) care is defined as those cognitively based assistive,
supportive, facilitative, or enabling acts or decisions that are tailor-made to fit
with the individual, group, or institutional, cultural values, beliefs, and lifeways to
provide or support meaningful, beneficial, and satisfying health care, or well-
being services.
Health
It is a state of well-being that is culturally defined, valued, and practiced. It
reflects individuals’ (or groups) ‘ ability to perform their daily role activities in
culturally expressed, beneficial, and patterned lifeways.
Human Beings
Such are believed to be caring and capable of being concerned about others’
needs, well-being, and survival. Leininger also indicates that nursing as a caring
science should focus beyond traditional nurse-patient interactions and dyads to
include families, groups, communities, total cultures, and institutions.
Society and Environment
Leininger did not define these terms; she speaks instead of worldview, social
structure, and environmental context.
Worldview
Worldview is how people look at the world, or the universe, and form a “picture
or value stance” about the world and their lives.
Cultural and Social Structure Dimensions
Cultural and social structure dimensions are defined as involving the dynamic
patterns and features of interrelated structural and organizational factors of a
particular culture (subculture or society) which includes religious, kinship (social),
political (and legal), economic, educational, technological, and cultural values,
ethnohistorical factors, and how these factors may be interrelated and function to
influence human behavior in different environmental contexts.
Environmental Context
Environmental context is the totality of an event, situation, or particular
experience that gives meaning to human expressions, interpretations, and social
interactions in particular physical, ecological, sociopolitical, and/or cultural
settings.
Culture
Culture is learned, shared, and transmitted values, beliefs, norms, and lifeways of
a particular group that guides their thinking, decisions, and actions in patterned
ways.
Culture Care
Culture care is defined as the subjectively and objectively learned and transmitted
values, beliefs, and patterned lifeways that assist, support, facilitate, or enable
another individual or group to maintain their well-being, health, improve their
human condition lifeway, or deal with illness, handicaps or death.
Culture Care Diversity
Culture care diversity indicates the variabilities and/or differences in meanings,
patterns, values, lifeways, or symbols of care within or between collectives related
to assistive, supportive, or enabling human care expressions.
Culture Care Universality
Culture care universality indicates the common, similar, or dominant uniform care
meanings, patterns, values, lifeways, or symbols manifest among many cultures
and reflect assistive, supportive, facilitative, or enabling ways to help people.
(Leininger, 1991)
Subconcepts
The following are the subconcepts of the Transcultural Nursing Theory of
Madeleine Leininger and their definitions:
Generic (Folk or Lay) Care Systems
Generic (folk or lay) care systems are culturally learned and transmitted,
indigenous (or traditional), folk (home-based) knowledge and skills used to
provide assistive, supportive, enabling, or facilitative acts toward or for another
individual, group, or institution with evident or anticipated needs to ameliorate or
improve a human life way, health condition (or well-being), or to deal with
handicaps and death situations.
Emic
Knowledge gained from direct experience or directly from those who have
experienced it. It is generic or folk knowledge.
Professional Care Systems
Professional care systems are defined as formally taught, learned, and
transmitted professional care, health, illness, wellness, and related knowledge and
practice skills that prevail in professional institutions, usually with
multidisciplinary personnel to serve consumers.
Etic
The knowledge that describes the professional perspective. It is professional care
knowledge.
Ethnohistory
Ethnohistory includes those past facts, events, instances, experiences of
individuals, groups, cultures, and instructions that are primarily people-centered
(ethno) and describe, explain, and interpret human lifeways within particular
cultural contexts over short or long periods of time.
Care
Care as a noun is defined as those abstract and concrete phenomena related to
assisting, supporting, or enabling experiences or behaviors toward or for others
with evident or anticipated needs to ameliorate or improve a human condition or
lifeway.
Care
Care as a verb is defined as actions and activities directed toward assisting,
supporting, or enabling another individual or group with evident or anticipated
needs to ameliorate or improve a human condition or lifeway or face death.
Culture Shock
Culture shock may result when an outsider attempts to comprehend or adapt
effectively to a different cultural group. The outsider is likely to experience
feelings of discomfort and helplessness and some degree of disorientation
because of the differences in cultural values, beliefs, and practices. Culture shock
may lead to anger and can be reduced by seeking knowledge of the culture
before encountering that culture.
Cultural Imposition
Cultural imposition refers to the outsider’s efforts, both subtle and not so subtle,
to impose their own cultural values, beliefs, behaviors upon an individual, family,
or group from another culture. (Leininger, 1978)
