Leininger’s Culture Care theory

Leininger’s Culture Care theory

Leininger’s Culture Care Theory was first proposed by nursing theorist and anthropologist Madeleine Leininger, who first recognized the need to provide patients with culturally congruent care. Leininger identified that nurses lacked cultural competence and knowledge when caring for patients. This factor impacted their comprehension of the various elements needed to deliver holistic care to support effective healing, compliance, and wellness. Therefore, Leininger proposed the Culture Care Theory to try to give culturally congruent care to patients through ‘cognitively based facilitative, supportive, assistive, and enabling decisions or actions that are primarily custom-designed to match with an individual’s, population’s, or institution’s cultural beliefs, values, and lifestyles’ (McFarland & Wehbe-Alamah, 2019). This paper summarizes some of the assumptions of the theory and implications for the advanced role of a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP).

According to Leininger’s proposal, delivering culturally congruent nursing care is only feasible or practical when the nurse and the patient (client) collectively work together to come up with a creative, unique, and bespoke care model or plan for the well-being and care of the patient. The model specifically addresses the unique cultural needs and gaps, as well as takes into consideration the desires and wishes of the client (McFarland & Wehbe-Alamah, 2019). Furthermore, the care framework requires the application of both professional and generic knowledge and methods to accurately fit such different ideologies into nursing care goals and actions. Most importantly, care skills and knowledge are typically re-patterned (or reorganized) to address the needs and interests of the patients or clients. Simply put, the theory asserts that all care models or modalities must involve the co-participation of the consumers and the nurse, with the two parties working conjointly, reciprocally, mutually, or collectively to recognize the cultural care needs, develop appropriate culturally congruent care plans, implement these plans, and monitor or evaluate the success of each of these plans.

These modalities can, thus, spur or encourage nurses to develop nursing decisions or actions using newly acquired knowledge and culturally-based processes. This will help in delivering holistic care that is satisfying and meaningful to individuals, populations, and institutions. Leininger’s theory proposes a patient cultural-based assessment or overview that is holistic and comprehensive, reflecting several aspects of the client’s background, including gender, language and communication, disability and ability, occupation, age, interpersonal relationships, socioeconomic status, appearance, dress, use of space, and foods and culinary practices (McFarland & Wehbe-Alamah, 2019).

Finally, it is important to note that Leininger’s culture care theoretical framework has a broad range of clinical implications for various advanced nursing roles, including MSN-trained Family Nurse Practitioners (FNPs). Classically, family nurse practitioners are trained to work with clients or patients of all cultural backgrounds (age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and so on) in different family settings, whether in private physician facilities, hospitals, or outpatient care centers. Their role is to manage patient records and documents, conduct examinations, create patient care plans, prescribe medications, counsel clients and their families, order and review lab tests, diagnose and treat patients, and help doctors with minor surgeries (Heale, Dahrouge, & Johnston, 2018). Adoption of Leininger’s culture care model in these family nurse practice environments is paramount to the delivery of holistic and comprehensive care, speeding the healing process, reducing patient suffering, and reducing overall healthcare costs. This is because Leininger’s framework takes a holistic, culturally congruent approach to care by identifying, examining, and diagnosing the unique care gaps and needs of specific patients (for example, the needs of elderly or infant patients). The care plans (including medication, prevention, rehabilitation, counseling sessions, and surgeries) issued after confirming the problems are also culturally based and often address the identified unique needs of the clients. The identification, the design of care plans, and the implementation of these frameworks – as well as their monitoring for effectiveness – are all done as a combined effort between the family nurse practitioner and clients (patients).

References

Heale, R., Dahrouge, S., & Johnston, S. (2018). Characteristics of nurse practice in family health teams in Ontario, Canada. Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 19(3-4), 72-81. doi: 10.1177/1527154418792538.

McFarland, M. R., & Wehbe-Alamah, H. B. (2019). Leininger’s theory of culture care diversity and universality: An overview with a historical retrospective and a view toward the future. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 30(6), 540-557. doi: 10.1177/1043659619867134.

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Leininger’s Culture Care theory

Write a one to two-page summary on key assumptions of Leininger’s Culture Care theory and summarize the implications of this theory for your chosen advanced nursing role.