Transcultural Nursing in relation to Holistic Nursing Practice

Transcultural Nursing in relation to Holistic Nursing Practice

Diversity of the world’s population has reached a point where it is vital to address and more importantly to understand, the ever growing challenge that transcultural nursing poses to the nursing profession. Addressing this issue avoids discrimination and promotes equality within holistic nursing practice in order to meet patients’ needs. Health care professionals should be qualified to deliver, on a daily basis, proficient care and sensitive skilled communication to culturally different individuals (Maier-Lorentz, 2008).

To exercise professional nursing in a conceptual way holistic nursing care focuses on physical, emotional, social, environmental and spiritual aspects as well as on the idea that any individual involved in treatment care should be treated as a whole and with dignity (Dossey & Guzzetta, 2005).

One of the areas to be discussed is Transcultural Nursing and Leininger’s Transcultural Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality and its research enablers: the Sunrise Enabler and the Ethnonursing Method.

Another area will be Holistic Nursing Practice and Nightingale’s Nursing Theory of Environmental Adaptation as well as the liaison between Transcultural Nursing and Holistic Nursing Practice.

Nightingale’s theory has been chosen over others because she was the first to acknowledge nurses’ work in a theoretical framework and also because she was considered to be the mother of nursing practices (Ellis, 2008).

The development of culture care theory introduced health care professionals into a new nursing dimension formed by issues such as culture background, spirituality, environment and others that demonstrated how culture and health care are linked (Leininger, 2002a).

Holistic Nursing Practice encourages active communication and reciprocal understanding, underlines the exercise of physiological and psychosocial awareness, it is based on logical thinking and supports values such as autonomy and patient wishes and tendencies (MacKinnon, 2010).

Transcultural Nursing

Transcultural nursing may be defined as a method to contrast and observe how individuals view health care, biased by their culture background. The principles of practising transcultural nursing are to provide complete nursing care to individuals or groups by treating them with respect and taking into account their cultural factors. It is all about nursing practice applied to cultural values and limitations (Leininger, 1991).

Definitions of transcultural nursing incorporate many factors that shape the individual’s cultural orientation. These include are age, sexual orientation and financial aspects. It has been suggested that by ignoring these culture background factors, health care professionals do not achieve enough cultural experience to be incorporated in holistic nursing practice (Barnes et al. 2000). This absence might lead to unsafe nursing care and both dissatisfied patients and professionals (Curren, 2006 cited in Leininger & McFarland, 2006, pp.159-160).

To promote transcultural nursing care, Narayan (2001) felt that there are four crucial attitudes to assume – caring, empathy, openness and flexibility. This shows the patients a cultural understanding, appreciation, consideration and willingness from health care professionals that are based on individu…………………………