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Leininger, Madeleine,

a nursing theorist who is credited with the foundation of transcultural nursing and the resultant nursing research, education, and practice in this subfield of nursing. The most complete account of transcultural care theory is found in her book, Care: The Essence of Nursing and Health (1984). Some of the major concepts are care, caring, culture, cultural values, and cultural variations. A basic tenet of Leininger's theory is that human beings are inseparable from their cultural background and social structure. She advocates caring as the central theme in nursing care, nursing knowledge, and practice. Caring includes assistive, supportive, or facilitative acts toward an individual or group with evident or anticipated needs. Caring serves to ameliorate or improve human conditions and life ways (life process). Her methodology is borrowed from anthropology, but the concept of caring is an essential characteristic of nursing practice.

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Leininger [li´nin-jer]

Madeleine M. Nursing theorist, author, educator, researcher, and consultant. She formulated the field of transcultural nursing in the mid 1950s and broadened the theoretical frameworks nurses use to care for individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds by developing the cultural care diversity and universality theory of nursing. She discovered that cultural aspects were the critical missing link in nursing knowledge and practice and has advanced the goal “that the cultural needs of people in the world will be met by nurses prepared in transcultural nursing” by numerous scholarly presentations, books, book chapters, and articles pertaining to transcultural nursing theory, practice, and research.