Culture Care Diversity Model
About Dr. Leininger: While it is important to look at a patient as a whole person from a physiological, psychological, spiritual, and social perspective, it is also important to take a patient’s culture and cultural background into consideration when deciding how to care for that patient. After all, the values and beliefs passed down to that patient from generation to generation can have as much of an effect on that patient’s health and reaction to treatment as the patient’s environment and social life. The Transcultural Nursing theory developed by Madeleine Leininger (1925-2012) is now a nursing discipline that is an integral part of how nurses practice in the healthcare field today.
-Nursing Theory
Major Concepts
- Illness and wellness are shaped by various factors including perception and coping skills, as well as the social level of the patient.
- Cultural competence is an important component of nursing.
- Culture influences all spheres of human life.
- It defines health, illness, and the search for relief from disease or distress.
- Religious and Cultural knowledge is an important ingredient in health care.
- The health concepts held by many cultural groups may result in people choosing not to seek modern medical treatment procedures.
- Health care provider needs to be flexible in the design of programs, policies, and services to meet the needs and concerns of the culturally diverse population, groups that are likely to be encountered.
- Most cases of lay illness have multiple causalities and may require several different approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and cure including folk and Western medical interventions.
- The use of traditional or alternate models of health care delivery is widely varied and may come into conflict with Western models of health care practice.
- Culture guides behavior into acceptable ways for the people in a specific group as such culture originates and develops within the social structure through inter-personal interactions.
- For a nurse to successfully provide care for a client of a different cultural or ethnic background, effective intercultural communication must take place.
Additional Information & References
- A great profile/biography of Dr. Leininger by Working Nurse
- Resources of Dr. Leininger
- The Council on Nursing and Anthropology (CONAA) is an organization for those interested in both nursing and anthropology
- The Online Journal of Cultural Competence in Nursing and Healthcare
- Transcultural Nursing Society