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Culture

In order to appreciate the meaning of the term "trans-cultural care," it is necessary to consider the meaning of the term "culture." Bonder, et al., [2001) suggested five components of culture:

Culture is learned, transmitted from generation to generation. Culture is localized; created through specific interactions with specific individuals. Culture is patterned; repetition of examples of specific behaviour. Culture is evaluative; values are a central component. Culture has continuity; with change as it is dynamic (p. 36).

Madeleine Leininger defined culture as

the learned, shared and transmitted knowledge of values, beliefs and lifeways of a particular group that are generally transmitted intergenerationally and influence thinking, decisions and actions in a patterned or certain way (Leininger,1996, p. 47).

According to these definitions, culture is not a fixed concept, but is always relative to a particular group, who share a common background or heritage, whether that is geographic, religious, political or economic. When people from different cultures live together in one place (multi-culturalism,) then what is "normal" for one group may not be normal for another.

We all have certain cultural assumptions, values, standard and ways of doing things which we regard as normal and universal but which are, in fact, highly cultural specific. What seems normal to us may seem strange and even shocking to other people, and vice versa.� (Daddy and Clegg, 2001, p.2.]

One important implication of the concept of culture is that it will have a direct influence on how people within any given culture view nurses and caregivers, and how caregivers view themselves. According to Salimbene (1999) "culture is what determines how people define health and illness (p.2)". Therefore, two different patients, from different cultures, with the same disease, might have a different perspective on their illness, and different expectations, and even perhaps different outcomes. Narayanasamy asserts that "(n)ursing is not culturally free but culturally determined, and if this is not recognized or understood then nurses become guilty of gross ethnocentrism" (Narayanasamy, 1999, p.664.]