Transcultural Nursing: Current Trends in Theoretical Works

Purpose

To explore the current trends in theoretical works related to transcultural nursing through an integrated literature review.

Applying cultural safety beyond Indigenous contexts: Insights from health research with Amish and Low German Mennonites

People who identify as members of religious communities, such as the Amish and Low German Mennonites, face challenges obtaining quality health care and engagement in research due in part to stereotypes that are conveyed through media and popular discourses. There is also a growing concern that even when these groups are engaged in research, the guiding frameworks of the research fail to consider the sociocultural or historical relations of power, further skewing power imbalances inherent in the research relationship. This paper aims at discussing the uses of cultural safety in the context of health research and knowledge translation with groups of people that are associated with a specific religion. Research with the Amish and Low German Mennonites is provided as examples to illustrate the use of cultural safety in this context. From these examples, we discuss how the use of cultural safety, grounded in critical theoretical perspectives, offers new insight into health research with populations that are traditionally labeled as minority, vulnerable, or marginalized, especially when a dominant characteristic is a unique religious perspective.     

Narrative inquiry as a research methodology exploring person centred care in nursing

Background

Although, person centred care has for a long time been an important approach to nursing care, it is often not a reality in the clinical environment. The focus of health research has, until recently, been on the physical aspects of a persons’ illness and this has influenced how care is delivered. There is a need to broaden the focus from the illness to the person who is ill. A holistic approach to the persons’ social and cultural experience of their illness will aid health care professions to provide person centred care.This paper will make the argument that narrative inquiry is a well suited to health care research in general and nursing research in particular as it focuses its inquiry on the individual person's experience of their illness – ‘what matters’ from the person's point of view. Narrative inquiry explores the narrative from a temporal, social and spatial view.