ORGANIZATION CULTURAL ASSESSMENT

Organization Cultural Assessment

Organization Cultural Assessment

This study is part of the INT international organization undertaken by the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association to map the literature of nursing. An overview of the project describes the background and methodology in detail. This study focuses on the literature of transcultural nursing. Its purpose is to identify the predominant format of literature used in the field, determine the currency of the most frequently used literature, identify the core journals of the field, and assess the level of indexing coverage of the core journals by major bibliographic databases. The results can be applied to collection development and instruction activities, assist in the identification of core literature and access tools for practitioners and librarians, and provide documentation and recommendations to the producers of bibliographic databases seeking to cover the literature of transcultural nursing more comprehensively.

Transcultural Nursing

Transcultural nursing is both a specialty and a general practice area in INT international organization. It focuses on worldwide cultures and comparative cultural caring, health, and nursing phenomena. Established as a formal area of inquiry and practice more than forty years ago, transcultural nursling's goal is to provide culturally congruent care.† As summarized by one nursing leader in the field, “Transcultural nursing is a body of knowledge that helps us [to] provide culturally relevant care” (Dicenso Cullum and Ciliska 2002).

MEDLINE's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) define transcultural nursing in the scope note as a nursing specialty created to answer the need for developing a global perspective in the practice of nursing in a world of interdependent nations and people. The focus of this nursing discipline is on integrating international and transcultural content into training. As an example, courses include study in the area of cultural differences, nursing in other countries, and international health issues and organizations.

Madeleine Leininger, founder and leader of the field, defines transcultural nursing as:

A substantive area of study and practice focused on comparative cultural care (caring) values, beliefs and practices of individuals or groups of similar or different cultures. Transcultural nursling's goal is to provide culture specific and universal nursing care practices for the health and well-being of people or to help them face unfavourable human conditions, illness or death in culturally meaningful ways.

INT international organization study the interrelationships of culturally constituted care from a nursing perspective. Possessing a combination of education and field experience, they provide knowledgeable, competent, and safe care to people of diverse cultures. Their study encompasses cultural care symbols, expressions, and meanings. Research in transcultural nursing focuses on discovering largely unknown and vaguely known cultural care and health concerns from two perspectives: The emic perspective focuses on the local, indigenous, and insider's culture; the etic perspective focuses on the outsider's world and especially professional views.

Transcultural nurses are specialists, generalists, and consultants. Functioning in diverse clinical practice settings and in schools of nursing, they assist others to become sensitive to and knowledgeable about diverse cultures. They may identify cultures that are neglected or misunderstood and help health care ...