Madeleine Leininger, Ph.D., reached retirement age more than 10 years
ago. Retirement? No way.
With as much energy as a 25-year-old, she is motivated by her passion
for transcultural nursing and humanistic caring.
Dr. Leininger was honored earlier this month at a ribbon-cutting and
dedication of the national Transcultural Nursing Office in the College
of Nursing and Health located at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich. The
Transcultural Nursing Society dedicated the office, which was originally
established in 1974, with the help of a donor drive.
Dr. Leininger, an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska Medical
Center College of Nursing, is recognized as the founder and international
leader of transcultural nursing, the study and practice of providing culturally
congruent care for people of diverse cultures.
The office will serve as a worldwide communications center for nurses
interested in developments in education, research, consultation and practice
of transcultural nursing, Dr. Leininger said. It also will be the business
center and home for the society and for board of trustee meetings and conferences,
as well as a place for nurses from diverse cultures to exchange and debate
ideas.
The office has a dedicated library of historical and electronic documents
of transcultural nursing from the past 27 years and a special collection
of Dr. Leiningers work since the 1960s.
Dr. Leininger is a highly visionary leader who has been way ahead of
the times and especially to envision the critical need to prepare nurses,
generate research and practice a new research-based body of knowledge,
said Mary Wawrzynski, Ph.D., dean of the Madonna University College of
Nursing and Health.
Certification of transcultural nurses also will be facilitated through
the office, Dr. Leininger said.
“The office was a wonderful dream come true, Leininger said. It has
been much needed with the rapidly growing demand for culturally-competent
transcultural nursing care practices. The office is of great significance
for members and non-members worldwide trying to contribute to health care
with diverse cultures.
As part of the dedication activities, about 150 faculty, students and
colleagues also attended a lecture given by Dr. Leininger.
Dr. Leininger, a nurse and anthropologist, is a native of Sutton, Neb.,
who began her career in the 1960s after living and working two years in
the Eastern Highlands of Papua, New Guinea.
She has long held the view that nurses and health disciplines need to
establish by 2020, educational programs and culturally competent
care practices to clients of diverse cultures. Dr. Leininger and her colleagues
have studied about 100 cultures worldwide and have established transcultural
nursing courses worldwide.
Transcultural nursing is when nurses use research-based knowledge and
skills in the most creative, compassionate and sensitive ways to serve
people of diverse or similar cultures, Dr. Leininger said. If we dont
provide health care that is sensitive and congruent with the patients
culture, we can expect our services may not be effective and will be rejected,
avoided, or even destructive to them.
Since launching the field in the mid-1950s, Dr. Leininger also has coined
the terms culturally competent and culturally congruent care in the
1960s which have recently been adopted by federal agencies, universities,
therapeutic health centers and accrediting agencies.
Dr. Leininger, emeritus professor of nursing and anthropology at Wayne
State University in Detroit, remains active as a lecturer, consultant,
theorist and author. She has served as dean and professor of nursing at
the University of Washington and University of Utah and director of three
university research centers.
Dr. Leininger was the first full-time president of the American Association
of Colleges of Nursing and founder of the Transcultural Nursing Society
and Human Care Theory and Research Organization. She is the author of 27
books, has published more than 200 articles and given more than 1,500 lectures
worldwide.