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transcultural nursing a humanistic and scientific area of nursing study and practice that focuses on how patterns of behavior in health, illness, and caring are influenced by the values and beliefs of specific cultural groups. It applies this knowledge in the planning and provision of culturally appropriate care. The assumptions of transcultural nursing are that the practices and caring behaviors of cultural groups related to health and illness may be identified and analyzed. The goal of such analysis is the development of a body of knowledge to serve as the basis of culturally relevant care.

The focus of transcultural nursing is the differences between cultural groups that require care providers to identify culture specific health and illness practices and caring behaviors as well as to identify behaviors that transcend cultural groups and appear to be universal human care practices. The scope of transcultural nursing is the delivery of personalized care in health promotion and maintenance, as well as illness situations.
History. The field of transcultural nursing represented a shift from the biophysiological and psychological models that dominated nursing in the 1950s to a broader theoretical framework. One early and consistent proponent of the field has been Madeleine M. Leininger. Many other nurses and anthropologists have contributed significantly to the conceptualizations and research of transcultural nursing; some have used the terms cross-cultural and intercultural to describe their research and practice. These terms refer to the goal of gaining and using knowledge about cultural beliefs, values, and practices to plan culture-appropriate nursing interventions and/or to negotiate changes in health and health related behavior among different cultures.

Transcultural nursing is the blending of anthropological means of inquiry with nursing theories of intervention and practice, which have care as a critical component. Transcultural nursing incorporated a comparative method and holistic approach from anthropology as well as several anthropological concepts such as lifestyles, world view, life experiences, environmental contexts, and folk beliefs of cultural groups as a basis for understanding variations in human behavior. The comparative approach directs nurses not to treat all persons alike, but to adjust care to the culturally influenced expectations of the person and family. A nurse from mainstream American culture might be assertive when caring for other mainstream American clients, but might be less assertive when caring for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese clients who value less assertive behaviors.

The delivery of care that is culturally appropriate prevents unnecessary conflicts between clients and providers from varied cultural backgrounds. It also increases client satisfaction with care and may improve client adherence to a regimen that has been agreed upon with the nurse.


Affecting or pertaining to individuals of different ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic backgrounds.
See: table
Caida de molleraLatin America“Sunken fontanel, ” i.e., dehydration. Thought to be caused by spells or hexes
LatahS.E. AsiaObsessive and repetitive use of vulgar language followed by obedient gesturing
Mal de ojoLatin America“Evil eye, ” i.e., a spell put on a child. Causes vomiting, belly pain, dehydration
PibloktoEskimo/InuitSudden manic madness, with subsequent amnesia of the event
Root; rootworkS.E. U.S.Hexing or healing through sorcery
TabankaTrinidadDepression and/or suicide after abandonment by a wife
TarantismMediterraneanUncontrollable stupor, melancholy, and manic dancing attributed to the bite of the tarantula
Windigo (witiko)Native AmericanCannabalism as a result of spirit possession
YonakiJapaneseA sleep-disorder of childhood, marked by separation anxiety and nocturnal crying
ZarNorthern African/Middle EasternSpirit possession
References in periodicals archive ?
Yes, they should serve only in these areas--unless they are willing and able to de-Americanize by dancing transculturally, particularly in the Arab world.
Margaret Tyler, for example, who audaciously translated a Spanish romance into English in 1578, does seem to dismiss her own role as secondary ("the invention, disposition, trimming, & what els in this story, is wholly an other mans, my part none therein but the translation"), but she goes on to describe translation in an unmistakably transculturally engaged, or cosmopolitan, way--as "giving entertainment to a stranger, before this time unacquainted with our country guise"--and to defend a woman's fitness for such a task.
Further, to view nineteenth-century translation of Lennox from a postmodern, post-structuralist perspective involves understanding translation not only as rewriting, but actually as writing--that is, as interpreting reality in the context of at least two cultures, transculturally.
5) This helps to explain why an African philosopher like Gyekye can refer unproblematically to "our common humanity" when discussing what he calls the "universalist thesis" that philosophical ideas and insights can operate transculturally and transhistorically.
At present, most healthcare programs from US healthcare systems are transculturally transferred as inconsistent, fragmented, pre-packaged additions to the inadequately functioning healthcare administration in post-Soviet nations.
According to Rorty, the notion of humans as rational "accounts for the residual popularity of Kant's astonishing claim that sentimentality has nothing to do with morality, that there is something distinctively and transculturally human called `the sense of moral obligation' which has nothing to do with love, friendship, trust, or social solidarity.
We thus have a set of distinctions and relations between the written or embossed or spoken spatio-temporal instances, the enculturated sentence, the transculturally meaningful proposition capable of being translated into a different cultural form, and the judgment or truth-claim for which I take responsibility.
The Hindu view of life in the world of the play would seek to question and problematize this worthiness to continue living; the Hindu philosophy of dharma makes us think transculturally through the existential configurations in Beckett's world of the play with different accents and certainly with a fresh set of values.
For this reason modernity could expand transculturally and develop into a global world culture.
On the one hand, we have an impulse to read the text transculturally, to claim that the cultural identity and beliefs of its speaker can be apprehended by anyone regardless of how those beliefs have been narrated.
These admissions made, is it not legitimate to propose a highly formal description of the virtuous person for the sake of discussing transculturally and transgenerationally our understanding of right human living?
Zimmerman explains its multiple dimensions: "Being named different things, the water becomes different things, besides being a symbol of transformation transculturally, as an element that both purifies and corrupts.

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